Dissociated Press

Avería is easy on the eyes

Mon, 10 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Avería: the average font

I spend more time than I care to admit staring at computer screens. It’s an occupational hazard, literally, of writing about tech for a living.

Much of that time is spent staring into ~~the abyss~~ a text editor, in this case Emacs. That being the case, I have test-driven quite a few different fonts to find one that is:

Pleasant to look at and isn’t boring.
Easy to read.
Displays code nicely.
Makes it easy to distinguish characters like l and 1.

I ran across Avería recently and it immediately caught my eye. It is, according to its web site, “the average of all fonts” on the creator’s computer. Somehow, at least to my aging eyes, it looks simultaneously classic and modern.

You can't keep politics out of it

Mon, 10 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Everything is political now

Mike Masnick wrote an article on Techdirt recently about why he’s leaning in to “political” coverage on the site. To put it succinctly:

When the very institutions that made American innovation possible are being systematically dismantled, it’s not a “political” story anymore. It’s a story about whether the environment that enabled all the other stories we cover will continue to exist.

I get that there are people who might want to escape politics in the safe haven of technology. I don’t understand people who still insist that it’s possible to participate in and use FOSS apolitically. Too many things are intertwined to be able to separate the development and distribution of FOSS from politics.

New blog (platform), who dis?

Sun, 12 Jan 2025 10:52:12 -0500

New Year’s Resolution accomplished

One of my New Year’s Resolutions for 2025 was to move my blog away from WordPress.com. The reasons for that should be relatively obvious, but you can read my most recent article about it if you aren’t up on the latest shenanigans around Automattic and such. It’s a disappointing tale, to be sure.

I had decided a few years ago that I was done futzing with new blogging platforms and was standardizing on WordPress. It was not a perfect platform, to be sure, but it was ubiquitous and seemed like it’d be stable for another 20 years. Obviously my crystal ball was not looking far enough into the future. 20 months, perhaps, but not 20 years.

A little aerc configuration tip

Sat, 21 Sep 2024 08:29:19 +0000

I’ve: been using aerc for a bit now to test it out as my default mail client. I have to say that I’m truly loving it. Today I was trying to clean up the view so that I wasn’t looking at two dozen old IMAP folders in the folders pane, and remapping a few folder names when I ran into what I thought was a snag but was actually a failure on my part to configure things properly at first.

OpenTofu project serves up stable release

Wed, 10 Jan 2024 16:28:49 +0000

August of last year, Hashicorp decided to move its products away from open source licenses to a source-available license with fuzzy parameters on its use in production. Shortly afterwards, the community forked Terraform as OpenTF and then it was endorsed and picked up by the Linux Foundation as OpenTofu. Now the project is ready to declare a stable release that it says is a production-ready “drop-in replacement for Terraform.”

OpenTofu isn’t a direct clone of Terraform, however. Kuba Martin, the interim technical lead of OpenTofu, says that the project is working to include client-side state encryption and other features that the community has proposed. Read the post for more details, but it looks like the project has made some strong strides in just a few months.

No, WordPress doesn't offer newsletters – not really

Fri, 05 Jan 2024 18:19:26 +0000

Switching away from Substack is a hot topic right now, for reasons I won’t belabor here (hint: it’s because of the Nazis) – which means that people are searching for alternatives. One that’s getting tossed around is WordPress. As much as I’d love that to be true, the WordPress Newsletter functionality is not what most folks think of when you think “newsletter.”

Catch me at Ohio LinuxFest (OLF)

Thu, 24 Aug 2023 14:40:01 +0000

Ohio LinuxFest (or OLF these days) is returning to Columbus, Ohio on September 8th and 9th. Happy to announce that I’m going to be doing the Friday keynote, " Open Source Can’t Win."

`:w gnu_bram_moolenaar.md`

Sat, 05 Aug 2023 18:28:34 +0000

Just learned this morning that Bram Moolenaar, creator and maintainer of Vim, passed away recently at 62. I’ve been a user of Vim since my 20s, so even though I’ve never met Bram his work has been an important part of my life.

I’ve already written about how I got started with Vim a while back, so I won’t rehash that here. Suffice to say that I’ve spent a lot of time in Vim since 1999 when I got started with it.

Tab Overflow: Markdown for timelines, AI for 78s, the superpower of being glue, and maddog on Red Hat

Wed, 02 Aug 2023 13:18:45 +0000

Still working on the next installment of the Clone Wars, but in the meantime… some interesting things I’ve stumbled on the past few days.

AI Audio Challenge: Audio Restoration of 78rpm Records — The Internet Archive is looking for “a program that can take all or many of the 400,000 unrestored records” in its 78rpm archive and clean them up. They have 1,600 examples of 78s that were cleaned up manually by humans, and are hoping that they can be used to train a program to do the work in an automated fashion.

Red Hat and the Clone Wars VI: Obfuscating Kernel Code for Fun and Profit

Sun, 23 Jul 2023 17:44:51 +0000

In our last episode we talked about the origins of Oracle Linux. This time around, we’ll look at one of Red Hat’s responses to the threat posed by Oracle Linux. Specifically, Red Hat’s decision to “obfuscate” the kernel source delivered in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6, and how it communicated (or didn’t) those decisions.

AlmaLinux makes its choice: The friendly fork

Sun, 16 Jul 2023 02:26:59 +0000

The AlmaLinux project, after taking some time to think it over, has decided to pursue RHEL compatibility but is no longer aiming to be 1:1 “bug-for-bug” compatible with RHEL. Be sure to read their announcement from Chair of the Board, benny Vasquez. Board minutes are also available.

Red Hat and the Clone Wars V: Oracle Linux Origins

Wed, 12 Jul 2023 13:44:12 +0000

Since Oracle has weighed in about Red Hat’s source changes, it’s time to take a look at the history of Oracle Linux. That takes us back to 2006, the world of enterprise computing, and into new markets. Specifically, Java and middleware.

Red Hat and the Clone Wars IV: Knives Out

Tue, 11 Jul 2023 17:00:57 +0000

Today SUSE announced its intent to do a “hard fork” of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), and yesterday Oracle came out with a press release aimed squarely at Red Hat and IBM, and trying to claim the high road in keeping Linux “open and free.” It’s fair to say that the knives are out. It’s not surprising but it is disappointing in a number of ways.

Red Hat and the Clone Wars III: The dawn of CentOS

Mon, 03 Jul 2023 17:32:10 +0000

Until the announcement that CentOS Linux 8 would be EOL at the end of 2021, CentOS users enjoyed a relatively drama-free period of stability that might suggest RHEL has always had a viable, dependable clone with predictable releases. That is, as you’re probably already guessing, very far from the truth.

Red Hat and the Clone Wars II: A history of the early 2000s Linux landscape

Mon, 26 Jun 2023 14:06:37 +0000

After Saturday’s post I wanted to take a step back and talk about some history that many have either forgotten or weren’t familiar with in the first place. Some may remember it quite well, but haven’t quite gotten the lessons right the first time around. Let’s talk about Red Hat Linux and the early days of Red Hat Enterprise Linux before it was even called that.

Red Hat sets the standard

My Linux journey started with Slackware Linux in 1996, completely by accident. By that I mean that I had never heard of Linux or sought it out, until I stumbled on a 4-CD set and decided I wanted to learn more. I was studying English lit and Communications/Journalism at a state school in the northeast corner of Missouri. Nobody I knew cared much about computers beyond games or running Word to write their papers. It was literally years before I met someone else who was an avid Linux user.

It was a surprise to learn, a bit later, that Slackware was a Linux and that many distributions existed. As I learned more and more about Linux, though, something became clear: Red Hat was the popular choice. Red Hat was the Coca-Cola of Linux, even before its IPO in mid-1999.

Red Hat and the Clone Wars

Sat, 24 Jun 2023 18:40:22 +0000

It’s been an exciting week for people who care about Linux distributions, FOSS licensing, FOSS distribution, FOSS business models, and the future of open source in general. Red Hat’s announcement that CentOS Stream will be the sole repo for public RHEL-related source code releases has generated a lot of chatter and exposed a lot of misconceptions about what the GPL requires and doesn’t.

WordPress, poster child of the LAMP stack, turns 20

Mon, 29 May 2023 17:52:23 +0000

WordPress turned 20 over the weekend. Older than that, if you count the b2 codebase WordPress forked from. 20 years for a project is quite an accomplishment, but WordPress hasn’t merely survived for 20 years. The open source CMS powers a huge chunk of the Internet and has shown how commerce and community can coexist successfully for the long haul.

It’s hard to convey how impressive WordPress was when it was launched, if you haven’t dabbled with the CMSes of the time. By the time WordPress 1.0 was released, I’d fussed with static site generators (Blosxom), phpWebLog, and even Slashcode. Standing up a CMS on shared hosting was non-trivial.

Everything you need to know about Vim and text on Linux (Slides)

Fri, 19 May 2023 14:46:45 +0000

Last week I had the opportunity to present at Open Source Summit North America (2023) in the Open Source On-Ramp track. I promised to upload my slides by Monday of this week (oops) but didn’t factor in getting COVID. Apologies to anybody who came looking for the slides previously, I was pretty much under the weather all week.

Better late than never, I hope. Here’s the deck in PDF form: Everything you need to know about Vim and text on Linux.

SOSSA and CRA Spell Trouble for Open Source Software

Mon, 01 May 2023 19:46:03 +0000

Even though I’m no longer writing full time, I do have a “bucket list” of publications I’d still like to write for, and Dark Reading has been one of those publications for many years. Happily for me, I get to cross that one off (though I’d do it again!) with this article, " SOSSA and CRA Spell Trouble for Open Source Software."

Short version: Some ill-considered legislation that’s coming in the wake of Log4Shell poses a threat to open source software, particularly the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA). From the article:

Stop calling things "clickbait" already

Sun, 30 Apr 2023 17:14:53 +0000

My friends, I have a request. That request is, for all that’s Holy, stop calling things “clickbait.” It’s an old and busted term that has no place in the media landscape of 2023.

Copyright consistency

Tue, 25 Apr 2023 13:00:55 +0000

I keep thinking about the arguments around content being used for AI data sets and the arguments around content being archived/offered by sites like Internet Archive.

They don’t seem consistent, on either side. Corporations are happy to use data sets scraped from copyrighted content, but they surely don’t want their copyrighted content slurped up into data sets without compensation.

On the flip side, a lot of the folks who (IMO rightly) support Internet Archive don’t want corporations to flex copyright against IA on the basis of IA being a public good.

See you at Open Source Summit North America!

Mon, 24 Apr 2023 16:24:09 +0000

In just a few weeks I’m going to be dusting off the slide clicker and giving two talks at Open Source Summit North America. I’ll be giving one talk on databases and containers, and another talk about working with text on Linux using Vim and other tools. Kind of a 101 for people who might want to delve into some command line magic for working with text.

Are Containers Ready for Production Databases?

Why would writing be any different?

Thu, 30 Mar 2023 21:59:00 +0000

Fair warning, I’m going to wade into the whole AI/ChatGPT discussion. It’s been discussed to death, but I’m going to jump in anyway. Feel free to click away if you’re already sick of the topic. I’m going to use “ChatGPT” as a stand-in for ML/AI-driven writing tools, even though it’s not the only one on the market and there’s certainly more to come.

Anyway, it seems like ChatGPT is poised to automate away a lot of writing work, and we’re in for tools that are going to produce a whole lot of content of varying quality and accuracy whether we like that prospect or not.

What If Everybody Did It (WIEDI)?

Sun, 26 Mar 2023 18:22:01 +0000

Most people, I think, tend only to think about their actions and interactions as one-offs. That is, we think “what happens if I do this” and consider the impact from that perspective. But what if we considered the outcomes and impacts if everybody (or even a lot of people) do the same thing? We might act differently. And maybe we should think that way more often. Let’s talk about What If Everybody Did It (WIEDI)? (Don’t worry, there’s a tie-in to open source and community in here, too…)

Why your talk was rejected (or maybe accepted)

Tue, 07 Mar 2023 16:07:02 +0000

I had a few snarky opening lines for this post, but decided that was a bit unfair. Let’s just say that people get very impassioned about tech events and getting talks accepted. If you’re on the conference committee, it can be… intense, sometimes, managing the needs of an event versus people’s deep interest in being one of the speakers. I thought it’d be helpful to give some insights into why talks are and aren’t accepted.

That's 100...

Wed, 01 Mar 2023 03:08:20 +0000

Today is, if I don’t miss my count, 100 days since I started the 100 day blogging challenge. I’ve updated the site every day since November 21st last year.

It’s been a good exercise. Some days I don’t have a lot left in the tank after work, some days I feel like I could do two or three posts. Focusing here has been great for breaking the Twitter habit.

Question is whether I plan to keep going or take a break. The answer is… maybe? Not letting myself off the hook tomorrow, but I might give myself a few days off here and there. Next week I’m planning to attend SCALE, which will be my first work travel in quite some time. That might cut into any quality blogging time, or it might be something to do when I’m winding down after a long day at the event.

Mini PC review: Beelink SER5 Pro with AMD Ryzen 5 5600H

Sat, 25 Feb 2023 18:18:56 +0000

About a month ago I bought a Beelink SER5 Pro Mini PC and have been using it as a desktop and test machine. I thought I’d give a quick review in case anybody else is looking at one of these for their own use.

The SER5 was a bit shy of $400 with an AMD Ryzen 5 5600H, 32GB of RAM, and a 500GB NVMe drive. Its footprint is about 4.5 inches (almost) square, and not quite 2 inches tall. That’s 126mm wide, 113mm long, 42mm tall if you prefer metric. It’s got 3 USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports, 1 USB 2.0 port, a 1GB Ethernet port, 2 HDMI ports, and a single USB-C port.

Gratuitous birthday post 2023 style

Thu, 23 Feb 2023 22:43:40 +0000

Chalk up one more orbit around the Sun for me. Another year older and maybe a little wiser. Certainly the stretch between the last birthday and this one has been full of life lessons.

Not making much of a fuss about the birthday thing this year, just sort of quietly observing the occasion and spending time with the fam. A big slice of cake, some good food, perhaps just a sip or three of good Scotch, and a couple of presents to open.

What's the deal with night mode?

Tue, 21 Feb 2023 22:41:00 +0000

At the risk of sounding like a Jerry Seinfeld bit, what is the deal with night mode? I was in a meeting today where somebody touted night mode in a tool as a Really Good Thing™ and I’m perplexed.

I’m not perplexed about what night mode (or dark mode) is. I might be a bit dense, but not quite that dense.

I’ve experimented with tons of themes, etc., over the years on Linux desktop environments. Mostly I tend to drift back to light themes because the dark ones feel a bit oppressive.

Happy Presidents' Day, President Carter

Mon, 20 Feb 2023 16:13:39 +0000

I was sad to learn over the weekend that former president Jimmy Carter has entered hospice care. But I’m not surprised that President Carter is facing the end of his life the same way he’s behaved his entire life – with dignity and grace.

Carter was the first person I voted for for president, with an asterisk. The asterisk being that I was in middle school and I voted for Carter in a mock election. It’d be a few more cycles before I was actually old enough to cast an official ballot, which I did, with the same disappointing results.

Making things vs. making the best things

Fri, 17 Feb 2023 18:49:37 +0000

Nice post I discovered on the Orange site today, " I don’t like making the best things." Short summary, trying to make the “best” things gets in the way of doing things we enjoy.

Specifically the author talks about blogging less often after they discovered they “only want to publish the best things, so I didn’t publish at all.”

Not exactly a new concept, but one that we probably all need to hear or read on a regular basis. It’s certainly something that’s blocked me quite a bit. Feeling like you always need to put something out that’s perfect is a really good way to never get things done. It’s the enemy of fun and the enemy of productivity.

Time to update your... cable?

Fri, 17 Feb 2023 02:26:47 +0000

Anybody else feel like the barrage of app and operating system updates is getting to be a bit much? Not only the pace of updates, which shows no signs of slowing, but also the continual expansion of devices that require updates.

Keeping your computer updated was no big deal. Then gaming consoles, smartphones, tablets, e-readers, smart watches, smart TVs, routers… it’s easy to feel like you spend more time updating devices than using them. And the latest? You need to update your power cord.

My new favorite GNOME extension: quake-mode

Wed, 15 Feb 2023 00:05:45 +0000

Guake has long been a favorite application of mine. If you’re new to Guake, it’s a terminal application for Linux that stays out of site until it’s summoned with a hotkey, like the console in Id Software’s Quake games.

Hit F12 or whatever combo you set up for it, and it slides into view over the top of other windows. When you’re done, bang the hotkey again and it slides back up out of sight. I find it super useful.

Blacklight: A real-time website privacy inspector

Tue, 14 Feb 2023 03:07:26 +0000

Ever wondered what kind of trackers are on any given site? Check out Blacklight, a web-based tool to reveal specific user-tracking technologies on a site.

I stumbled on this via The Markup and thought it might be interesting for privacy minded folks. (See: " How We Built a Real-time Privacy Inspector" from 2020.)

I ran it on a few sites just to see what I got back. GNOME’s extensions website was clean. Local news site, WRAL.com is crawling with trackers, cookies, monitoring and heaven knows what else. LWN.net? No ad trackers but Blacklight sussed out 2 third-party cookies.

In case your current keyboard is too practical... the Cube Keyboard

Sat, 11 Feb 2023 03:56:20 +0000

To follow up on yesterday’s post about word processors, here’s a new entry for keyboard enthusiasts: The Cube Keyboard. It’s a keyboard that’s… a cube.

I don’t think he’s going to win any typing speed contests with this one. Hat tip to Lobste.rs for this one.

My first word processor

Fri, 10 Feb 2023 03:25:54 +0000

This week I took a little trip down memory lane when a friend posted a meme or something about Stephen King’s Wang word processor in the 1980s.

That was early for me, but sometime in 1993 or 1994 I bought my first word processor. Not a general purpose computer with a word processor, but a Brother Word Processor. It was substantially less profit-generating for me than King’s Wang. Then again, it wasn’t a five-figure investment, either. Maybe $250, certainly no more than $300. At 23 or 24, though, that was a major investment. I’ve owned cars that cost less.

Things they don't teach, but should: Content review

Thu, 09 Feb 2023 03:31:55 +0000

Writing and editing are taught widely in schools and professional programs, but content review is a neglected and unloved (and rare) skill that I’ve never seen taught or even acknowledged – but it’s widely required in jobs throughout the tech industry. If you’re a product manager, product marketer, comms professional, content writer, developer advocate, community manager – take your pick – you probably need to participate in content review as part (or most) of your job, but do you feel confident you’re doing it well and efficiently?

Real browser alternatives on iOS?

Wed, 08 Feb 2023 03:42:15 +0000

Ars and The Register (and probably others) are reporting that Google and Mozilla are working on “browsers that break current App Store rules.” You know, browsers that aren’t dependent on Apple’s rendering engine. Actual full-fledged browsers.

For various reasons I use iOS as the least-bad option (for me) between Android and iOS. But this is a thing that’s bugged me a long time.

To be honest, I don’t really understand Apple’s reasoning here. Allowing a slightly hobbled version of Chrome doesn’t really provide adequate “defense” of Apple’s walled garden. It seems to me that Chrome loyalists would prefer a mostly Chrome-ish experience to Safari, even if it’s not the full deal.

No, Netflix isn't chopping down your family

Tue, 07 Feb 2023 00:13:44 +0000

I like Cory Doctorow a lot, and tend to agree with him on most things, but this screed about Netflix changing its “family” settings is not one of them.

Realities of the Fediverse: ActivityPub and Mastodon have room to improve

Mon, 06 Feb 2023 03:14:36 +0000

The fediverse is a grand improvement in many ways over walled gardens like Twitter, but there’s plenty of room to improve. For example, federation does little good for users on a site that unexpectedly shuts down without time for users to migrate.

Reconnecting with art

Sun, 05 Feb 2023 03:29:03 +0000

Art museums are a holy place for me, like good book stores and record stores. Little bubbles where we curate our attempts to communicate, to make others feel something. Or, simply, to create.

Art museums are where yesterday and today meet, and the dead tongues and hands of our past selves live again for a moment. Stand here, look. Gaze into someone else’s heart and mind for a time. If humans have a purpose, surely art is a crucial part of it.

Can we get AIs to work the DMV?

Fri, 03 Feb 2023 03:28:19 +0000

While startups are busy trying to put (more) people out of work writing or doing artwork, how about turning some attention towards the DMV?

Poking at Distrobox

Tue, 31 Jan 2023 03:37:30 +0000

I’m probably late to the party, but Distrobox has to be one of the best open source projects to drop in the past few years.

Deep-dive into the "Dune" font, Davison Art Nouveau

Sat, 28 Jan 2023 03:36:59 +0000

Whether the Dune series is your cup of tea or not, anybody who’s spent more than a little time in the sci-fi section of a book store is likely familiar with the series’ book covers and the unusual typeface. I caught a link off the Orange site to a story on Fonts In Use about the history of the typeface that graces Frank Herbert’s series, and it’s right up my alley.

How have your social media habits changed since the Twitter takeover?

Thu, 26 Jan 2023 01:14:22 +0000

It’s been a few months now since the Twitter Takeover, and Musk’s gutting of the Twitter workforce and various antics. I haven’t deleted my account, but I set it to private and set up shop on Mastodon in mid-November. Curious about what others have done and how your habits have changed (if at all).

Creating slides with Markdown using Marp

Wed, 25 Jan 2023 03:31:16 +0000

Need to make a presentation, but don’t like using a GUI app? Take a look at Marp, the Markdown Presentation Ecosystem.

Something I should've done a long time ago: Installing Pi-hole

Mon, 23 Jan 2023 03:36:56 +0000

Spent some quality Sunday time today refurbishing some older mini PCs that had been gathering dust so I could run a few personal projects. One of the projects I’ve had on my to-do list an embarrassingly long time is to set up Pi-hole for ad blocking / filtering. If I’d known it’d be that easy I’d have done it a long time ago!

I installed Pi-hole on an ancient Core i3 NUC with 8GB of RAM running Debian. It took about two minutes, five if you count reading some documentation and maybe seven minutes if you count logging into the admin interface and quickly setting my laptop and phone to use Pi-hole for testing.

Absolute silliness: Hampster Invaders

Sun, 22 Jan 2023 02:53:03 +0000

You remember Space Invaders? You remember the Hampster Dance? Get ready for Hampster Invaders.

Lazyweb: Matching compatible mini-PCs with RAM / NVMe on hand?

Thu, 19 Jan 2023 10:30:31 +0000

I’ve recently upgraded a few laptops and have some NVMe drives and spare RAM on hand. Rather than letting them gather dust or try to sell them online, I’d like to match them with inexpensive mini PCs for use in my home lab.

Suggestions on the best way to backwards-match this?

Laws of technology and remote work

Sat, 14 Jan 2023 03:11:33 +0000

Some observations on a Friday evening about the realities of home offices and technology.

A laptop’s cabling will always be located on the maximally inconvenient side. Especially power cords with bulky connectors.
Internet only fails before or during an important teleconference or the most suspenseful part of a movie or show.
- This is also true of power outages.
Hotel internet is most reliable at mid-range hotels. Fleabag hotels and swank resorts have uniformly crappy internet.
The most aloof house cat will only want cuddles when you’re trying to focus.
The dongle, connector, cord, or other item you know you own and see frequently when unneeded goes into witness protection when it’s wanted. It will resurface when a replacement is obtained.
All deliveries and service calls happen while in meetings.
- UPS and FedEx only ring the doorbell when it’s inconvenient. Otherwise deliveries are made with maximum stealth. Packages requiring signatures will be announced in a whisper from across the street.
After troubleshooting a system or application extensively it will turn out that the problem is a faulty cable or coincidental internet glitch. However, you are likely to have introduced a new, unrelated problem in an attempt to fix the symptoms.

Technology: The solution to, and cause of, most of life’s problems!

USB-C is simple, right? Well...

Wed, 11 Jan 2023 03:43:51 +0000

One of the nice things about USB-C is its simplicity, right? No more figuring out which side is up to plug into a device. The connector is super-friendly. But… that’s where the simplicity stops.

The scorpion strikes: Still speaker-less after 11 votes

Fri, 06 Jan 2023 03:57:59 +0000

Clearly nobody taught Kevin McCarthy and the rest of the establishment GOP the lesson of the frog and the scorpion.

It would be funny if it was a plot on a modern West Wing, but it just seems like a harbinger of more problems to come. After 11 tries, the U.S. House of Representatives has failed to appoint a speaker, due to in-fighting and extortion from the most extreme wing of an already extreme party.

MacBook Pro 2015 update: The winner is Pop!_OS

Thu, 05 Jan 2023 03:10:38 +0000

After a few tries to put Fedora on the MacBook Pro 2015, I auditioned a number of other Linux distros and wound up going with Pop!_OS.

I gave Chrome OS Flex a brief spin, but it wasn’t quite my jam. If you like Chrome OS and have an old PC or Mac you’d like to give a little more life to, I give it a thumbs up. I was able to install some regular Linux apps on it as well as the standard Chrome apps, but found Firefox to be sluggish and generally just didn’t click with Chrome OS.

Two observations about Mastodon in early 2023

Tue, 03 Jan 2023 03:24:47 +0000

Tonight, not for the first time, I learned about a “breaking news” item from Mastodon. That’s been happening more often over the past few weeks, whereas this time last year I’d have gotten this kind of thing via Twitter first.

This seems significant to me because Mastodon is making the leap from “a small group of people talking about the service itself a lot” to “several of my friends are here and there’s some community” to “a news source” rather quickly. It took Twitter a long time to cross that chasm. And it’s one of the things that made Twitter valuable, if also a primary source of doom scrolling.

Resolutions for 2023

Sat, 31 Dec 2022 22:17:33 +0000

Here it is, finally, the last day of 2022. None too soon. As the meme says, I’m going into 2023 real quiet-like and hoping for a better year.

I’ve set aside the idea that a new year means a new me, or that I have the ability to embark on a massive self-improvement campaign just because the odometer has rolled over on another year. But I like to reflect on some things I’d like to have done come this time next year.

Friday night’s alright for cat pics…

Sat, 31 Dec 2022 03:33:49 +0000

Home from a great visit with my brothers. Enjoy some cat pics!

Bubby looking dignified Willow giving side-eye

Lazyweb: Best Linux distro for a 2015 MacBook Pro?

Thu, 29 Dec 2022 02:48:19 +0000

Apple has decided that my 2015 MacBook Pro isn’t deserving of the latest macOS, so I’m looking to run Linux on it to get a few more years out of it. My first plan was to put Fedora on it, but Fedora 36 and 37 have failed to " set a new efi boot target."

Chrome OS Flex installed just fine, but I don’t know if I want to stick with Chrome OS long-term. It’ll do if all I use it for is couch surfing, but I might like to turn this machine into a home server running a few VMs or similar.

Link-o-Rama: Desert of Social Media, a raccoon and snow, dissecting the LastPass communications

Wed, 28 Dec 2022 03:19:14 +0000

Long day, let’s hit the links.

Great post from Cat Valente about the continual ruination of online social communities by corporations and malicious actors. (My words.) " Stop Talking to Each Other and Start Buying Things: Three Decades of Survival in the Desert of Social Media."

From Cat, “It’s the same. It’s always been the same. Stop benefitting from the internet, it’s not for you to enjoy, it’s for us to use to extract money from you. Stop finding beauty and connection in the world, loneliness is more profitable and easier to control. Stop being human. A mindless bot who makes regular purchases is all that’s really needed.”

Why don't people just...?

Tue, 27 Dec 2022 03:35:03 +0000

Bit of a rant here, so be warned…

Caught two threads today with the general gist of “why don’t people just…” –specifically, why haven’t people learned from Twitter or just sucked it up and started using 2FA, no matter what level of computer literacy they might be at.

Why don’t open source projects just stand up Mattermost instead of Discord? Why haven’t users finally learned and started adopting 2FA?

In the first instance, I think people just imagine standing up a service and don’t think about the long-term implications of offering a service like Mattermost for a project. There’s a ton of work, and potentially a fair amount of money, involved in offering up a service that’s going to be used by a lot of users 24/7.

Year of the RSS reader?

Sat, 24 Dec 2022 01:41:23 +0000

This strikes me as more wishful thinking than likely, but Nikki Usher over on NeimanLab is predicting " the year of the RSS reader" to replace Twitter and curb the deluge of newsletters in our inboxes.

Space debris, normalcy bias, RSS as the foundation for social media

Fri, 16 Dec 2022 01:50:40 +0000

Too many tabs open in the browser today, even compared with my usual tab overload.

Good piece on Ars about space debris. Pull quote by Moriba Jah, an astrodynamicist from the University of Texas at Austin, “I also predict that we will see a loss of human life by (1) school-bus sized objects reentering and surviving reentry and hitting a populated area, or (2) people riding on this wave of civil and commercial astronauts basically having their vehicle getting scwhacked by an unpredicted piece of junk. I predict that both those things are going to happen in the next decade.“Just reading this post, I feel like Jah would be a lot of fun to work with…
" How to rebuild social media on top of RSS” by Jacob O’Bryant. Not sure this way of thinking will take off, but I like the idea.
" How normalcy bias will define our future” by Jessica Wildfire. Wildfire writes about the concept of normalcy bias and how it’s defined the past few years and how it’ll impact us in the future. The concept is something that’s been gnawing at the edges of my brain for a while now, but I didn’t have the name for it. Things that, objectively, should be cause for alarm that people just refuse to react appropriately to. (Whether that’s Trump, COVID, or Elon Musk, to name only a few…)

Definitely worth a read. Expect I’ll write more about it in the future. What’s on your mind lately?

Careful when cloning: Editing machine IDs for fun and profit

Wed, 14 Dec 2022 21:58:00 +0000

Today I was setting up some VMs on Fedora in Cockpit and decided to clone an Ubuntu 20.04 LTS image, which immediately pulled the same IP as the original. I hadn’t had that issue with CentOS or Debian, not quite sure why, but the culprit is a duplicate machine ID. Here’s how to fix that.

Fedora 37 + Cockpit + Cockpit Machines = Joy

Wed, 14 Dec 2022 03:57:27 +0000

I’ve been doing a lot of “set things up and tear them down again” lately, and the combination of Fedora 37, Cockpit and the Cockpit Machines application, plus an old Core i7 machine with 64GB of RAM is making that a piece of cake.

The Cockpit Project is a fantastic project that doesn’t get nearly enough attention. It’s a web-based graphical interface for Linux systems, and it can shave a lot of time (and reading man pages…) off basic system administration tasks.

The note-taking winner is... Joplin. For now

Tue, 13 Dec 2022 02:32:02 +0000

A few weeks ago I posed a question about a note-taking app to beat Vim, Markdown and Git. So far, that winner is Joplin.

I’d tried Joplin once or twice but bounced off of it for one reason or another. The UI is a little less compelling than other native apps, I’d like a bit more between-note linking features, but after a couple of weeks of sticking with it, it’s growing on me.

Yak-shaving day

Fri, 09 Dec 2022 23:02:30 +0000

Spent the bulk of the day today doing a little product testing, which involved a lot of yak shaving. Setting up a few servers to test, creating users, etc.

It’s been a little while since I spent a whole day at the console. It’s been simultaneously fun, humbling, and eye-opening. Fun, for obvious reasons. Humbling, because my admin skills are a bit rusty and outdated. And eye-opening because of the sheer number of things that actually do “just work” which … hasn’t always been the case.

Where does Mastodon fit with social media policies?

Wed, 07 Dec 2022 02:55:40 +0000

Mastodon is an odd beast. This has been discussed a lot from the user’s point of view, but not so much from the organizational point of view. Specifically, should organizations provide users with branded/hosted instances, and what kind of policies apply for this new breed of social media?

(Note: I’m going to use “Mastodon” here, but this really applies to any kind of federated social media over ActivityPub or similar where users are identified in the “@user@organization.tld” format.)

Link-o-Rama: Banning AI, thinking about failure, goblin mode

Tue, 06 Dec 2022 02:58:24 +0000

Today’s been a good, but busy, day. Too busy to finish off that post that’s been lurking, for months, in my drafts but a good day to drop a few links that might be interesting.

One of the best job perks I ever had...

Sun, 04 Dec 2022 23:02:18 +0000

It’s been more than 15 years since I worked for Data393 ( which doesn’t actually exist anymore…) but I still miss one of the perks of that job: 2U of rack space and a network drop with an IP address.

Data393 was a hosting company in Denver and I worked in the NOC and as advanced support in 2004-2005. I mostly worked weekends, during a lull in my freelance writing. It was a great job where I learned a ton in short time about system administration and troubleshooting, the business of running a data center, customer support… and I really enjoyed the team there, too.

Hello Percona!

Thu, 01 Dec 2022 14:51:18 +0000

Happy to share that I started a new job this week as Head of Community at Percona! I know it’s traditional to talk about how excited you are for a new job, but it’s true, I’m really psyched about the opportunity, the team I’ll be working with and Percona as a company.

Percona’s philosophy and mission align really nicely with my personal values. Percona is committed to open source and helping its customers succeed with open source databases. Not open core, open source.

20 blogging and article prompts for tech bloggers

Tue, 29 Nov 2022 12:58:04 +0000

Stumped for ideas what to blog about? Not sure what people would want to read that would be worth writing about? Here’s 20 prompts to get you started (some tweaking may be required).

Yesterday I wrote about the 100 days of blogging challenge. A friend of mine asked if I had a good source of prompts for folks interested in doing something similar. Truth is, I hadn’t thought much about that.

100 day blogging challenge: Let's get those RSS feeds going again

Mon, 28 Nov 2022 16:08:15 +0000

My Mastodon network is picking up nicely. It’s not quite reached the same level or variety of activity from Twitter, but it’s getting there. I wonder if there’s a chance we can revive actual blogging as well? I’m giving it a shot with a 100 day blogging “challenge” for myself.

Extremely minimal blogging with WriteFreely

Fri, 25 Nov 2022 21:58:15 +0000

Loving the explosion of IndieWeb activity. For fun I decided to try out WriteFreely, a really minimal blog with ActivityPub features.

How I got started with Vim

Tue, 22 Nov 2022 18:32:58 +0000

Yesterday I made an offhand comment about the long story of how I got started with Vim, so I figured I’d follow up today with that. That story takes us all the way back to 1999.

Is there a note-taking app that beats Vim, Markdown, and Git?

Mon, 21 Nov 2022 18:31:36 +0000

Usually I avoid post titles / headlines in the form of a question, but I’m genuinely curious: Have you found a good note-taking app that’s ultimately better than just plain text files in Markdown with Vim (optionally synced with Git)?

Vivaldi jumps into social while Twitter burns

Fri, 18 Nov 2022 14:45:55 +0000

Looks like Vivaldi is the first to jump on Mastodon/the Twitter exodus as an opportunity to boost their other offerings. The company launched “Vivaldi Social” on November 15th, which is a Vivaldi-run instance of Mastodon tied in with their other offerings.

From their post, “Vivaldi Social is a natural progression for us, given our existing reliable alternatives to Big Tech — a feature-rich and flexible browser with a built-in mail client, calendar, and feed reader. We also give you the ability to express yourselves through a free and ad-free blogging platform, a thriving forum, and a webmail service.”

Little bug in Apostrophe in Fedora 37 (or "oh, I can't log into bugzilla")

Thu, 17 Nov 2022 22:25:14 +0000

Installed Fedora 37 today and it was a pretty smooth experience. No surprises there. One of the recommended applications (Apostrophe) looked interesting so I installed that and found it wouldn’t start.

Poking a bit at the terminal I got a Python error that I chased down on google and tracked back to a missing package (webkit2gtk4.0). Once I installed that it ran just fine.

Went to file a bug and found that I can’t log in with my Fedora Account Services (FAS) account because it had been associated with my Red Hat email. Tried changing it but either it’s not syncing quickly or there’s a snafu elsewhere.

Stop normalizing Musk (and why "work harder" isn't going to do it for Twitter)

Wed, 16 Nov 2022 16:42:53 +0000

One of the most disheartening things about the Musk takeover of Twitter is how his malignant narcissism is being treated as normal. Even sadder, celebrated, by a small but vocal contingent of people who are still inexplicably fans of a person who’d happily have them thrown into a wood chipper if it meant an extra profit - or just for fun.

In a better world, Twitter’s employees would’ve locked arms and simply refused to take his orders. If Musk wanted someone fired, let him figure out how to get access to the systems to do so. Let him take personal responsibility for the consequences. See how long he can keep the site up solo.

A plea to people making howto and informational videos: Give us a transcript!

Mon, 14 Nov 2022 15:13:24 +0000

Video content is here to stay. As a text-based person with a face for radio, I’ve come to grips with it. But that doesn’t mean video alone gets it done.

If you’re producing video content, please also share a transcript of the video. I realize some people love video, and that’s fine - but it’s not that much harder to include a transcript and it’s much more inclusive and potentially more effective.

Taming Mastodons for a better web

Wed, 09 Nov 2022 16:59:54 +0000

The surge of people joining Mastodon and the Fediverse the past few days has been inspiring. I’m optimistic about the potential for a better web, but experience keeps whispering in my ear.

Right now, people are fired up and ready to try new things. They’re happy to sign up, post a few “toots” to Mastodon, and think about a better web where things are decentralized and users have more control of their destiny. You know, the standard “DIY is better” package. Like when everybody started baking their own bread at the start of the pandemic in 2020.

Give nothing, expect nothing: GitLab's the latest punching bag for entitled users

Wed, 10 Aug 2022 15:26:18 +0000

What do Docker, GitLab, and Red Hat have in common? Aside from various levels of participation in open source, they’ve all been punching bags over the past few years for non-paying users angry that they’ve taken some freebies off the table.

When Docker had the temerity to introduce limits for free users pulling containers from DockerHub, or requiring a subscription for large business users, lots of people started complaining and/or looking for a free alternative.

So long, Shadowman

Mon, 16 May 2022 12:46:06 +0000

After nearly nine years, I’m no longer at Red Hat. Feels weird to type that, but it’s true.

I joined in August 2013 to work in the Open Source and Standards office (now OSPO) when the company was fewer than 6,000 people, Jim Whitehurst was CEO and everybody thought OpenStack was going to be the Next Big Thing™ up against public cloud.

Nobody asked me “where do you see yourself in five years?” when I interviewed for Red Hat — which is a good thing, because I would no doubt have gotten it very, very wrong. From OSAS I went to portfolio marketing, to the comms team running the Red Hat Blog, and then to managing the editorial team over several properties.

Three sentences in a trench coat pretending to be a coherent thought

Tue, 13 Jul 2021 13:02:03 +0000

At least once a week when I’m reading, or editing, copy related to work I’ll skim over something and realize that what I just read makes no sense. Sure, the words are used properly. The paragraph is composed of sentences that seem grammatically correct. But if you stop to think about what the copy is saying, it’s just three sentences in a trench coat pretending to be a coherent thought.

3 ways to reduce technical debt in content: Avoid bare URLs, events and analyst content

Fri, 02 Jul 2021 14:53:14 +0000

Infrastructure and code aren’t the only things in your organization that incur technical debt. Content marketing on blogs is a major offender. Here’s just three things to cut down on technical debt in your content marketing on blogs.

Content marketing practice to avoid: Bare URLs/URIs in content

Be kind to your readers and to yourself: Stop putting bare URIs / URLs in your content. Bare URLs - that is, something like www.example.com/document should never be in prose on the web. No, you’re not doing your content marketing any favors with cutesy shortened URLs or campaign vanity URLs. It’s not 2003, nobody is going around memorizing URLs anymore.

reMarkable 2 and its unremarkable software: Substandard tools hobble excellent hardware

Tue, 29 Jun 2021 12:37:29 +0000

The reMarkable 2 is a nifty piece of engineering. It’s about the size of a thin college (U.S.) notebook, responsive and feels as close to writing on paper as a tablet is likely to get. The tools, on the other hand, leave a lot to be desired.

reMarkable 2 and cloud services

The reMarkable 2 is not the device to invest in if you’re avoiding cloud services. The reMarkable offers a desktop app and mobile app. You might think that you install the desktop app and connect the reMarkable to the computer to manage the device, grab files, and so forth. But that’s not the way the software works.

The reMarkable 2 needs reFinement: Writing, workflow and usability

Wed, 02 Jun 2021 22:45:02 +0000

I’ve been putting the reMarkable 2 through its paces since I got it a few days ago. In this post I’m going to jot down some thoughts about its overall usability whether it might replace my trusty paper notebooks. Spoiler alert: quite possibly!

Making marks on the reMarkable 2

First consideration: How’s the writing experience? The tablet could have all the whiz-bang features ever, but if the tactile experience of writing on it doesn’t live up to writing on paper, then what’s the point?

Test-driving the reMarkable 2 on Linux: paper-like or paper-weight?

Mon, 31 May 2021 14:43:16 +0000

Is the reMarkable 2 a suitable replacement for pen and paper? Does it work well with Linux? I hope to find out! I’ll be writing about my experiences with the tablet over the next week and beyond. If you’ve been on the fence, feel free to follow along. (Assuming I don’t absolutely hate it and decide to send it back…)

Linux, reMarkable and the elusive paper-free future

I’ve been hoping to get to a point where tablets would match the experience and ease of writing on paper since the first iPad came out. The iPad with an Apple Pencil is good. The tactile experience still leaves something to be desired, however. It feels like writing on glass.

Link-o-Rama: FTP is 50, stick with email, FVWM(3) ...

Tue, 04 May 2021 13:59:50 +0000

The unintentional theme of today’s Link-o-Rama is, apparently, tech nostalgia and why old tools are the best tools.

The File Transfer Protocol is now 50 years old. 50. FTP has outlasted quite a few protocols in that time, evolved a great deal, and been used to transfer Heaven only knows how many files. I hope that Abhay Bhushan is basking a bit in the knowledge that his creation is still widely used half a century later.

Make your sentences poorer, get out of the three comma club

Sun, 11 Apr 2021 17:02:39 +0000

There’s a running gag in the show Silicon Valley about a character obsessed with being in the “three comma” club. Being a billionaire, in other words. When he loses enough money to drop from $1.2 billion to “merely” $900 million, he’s “financially ruined” and despondent. Judging by the way some folks write sentences, they’re just as afraid to lose a comma.

Link-o-Rama: Hunspell dict format, curl is 23, response to flatkill.org

Sat, 20 Mar 2021 12:56:38 +0000

A few of the posts I found interesting this week.

17 (ever so slightly) weird facts about the most popular dictionary format: " the dictionary format of Hunspell has a lot of peculiarities. Depending on your mindset, you might find the facts below curious, fascinating, ridiculous, or just plain boring. " ( zverok with ruby)
Q&A with John Kozubik: Long-form Q&A with the CEO of rsync.net on console.dev. Interesting for his discussion of personal technology / tools. I loved using rsync.net but it was just too pricey for the storage allotted for personal use. Glad they continue to have a successful business.
Daniel Stenberg has a nice post about the 23rd anniversary of the first official release of curl. “That was the day the first ever tarball was made available that could build a tool named curl. I put it together and I called it curl 4.0 since I kept the version numbering from the previous names I had used for the tool. Or rather, I bumped it up from 3.12 which was the last version I used under the previous name: urlget.”
A worthwhile response to the flatkill.org site that tries to spread FUD about Flatpaks. “A lot of flatkill.org’s statements are made to incite fear in the Linux community. Given that all Flatpak packages are available and able to be edited by anyone, the appropriate response is to educate on why this is a problem, and then fix it. The way that flatkill.org approached this issue says a lot.”

Using the Display Posts plugin with WordPress and custom CSS

Fri, 26 Feb 2021 16:30:24 +0000

In case this helps anybody else, wanted to share how I created the Top 100 Albums page here on Dissociated Press. I wanted to be able to automagically create a page from all posts tagged with the “100 albums” tag, rather than manually laying things out.

The final result is using the Display Posts plugin that lets you utilize a WordPress shortcode (" display-posts") with some parameters to specify how the posts should be displayed and how many of them should be displayed.

Using the Wayback Machine Downloader to rebuild Dissociated Press

Mon, 15 Feb 2021 22:13:31 +0000

This domain has been online since January 2001. A homepage or, more often, some type of blog has been here almost as long. I’ve been, often, lackadaisical about continuity of content and posting. The kind folks at the Internet Archive, or rather their web scraping bots, have been far more attentive and consistent.

I’ve lost track, but I’ve probably wiped the slate clean and started over seven or eight times since I first registered dissociatedpress.net. Most of the restarts have been intentional, but a few were not. More than a few times I’ve wished to recover things I’d written here (and elsewhere), either to put them back on the web or just to have them as reminder how truly bad my writing used to be. (Yes, once upon a time, it was worse.)

Thoughts on Doom: Eternal

Sat, 23 May 2020 22:05:08 +0000

Doom: Eternal is a pretty good name for a franchise that keeps getting ported, updated, and rebooted more than 25 years after it first launched. Though I don’t do much gaming these days, the siren song of Doom was just too much for me and I caved and bought a PS4 and a copy of Doom: Eternal a few weeks ago and have been playing it off and on for about a week. Here’s one old guy’s take on the reboot so far, after completing several levels and maybe 15 hours of gameplay.

"Animals" by Pink Floyd (No. 38)

Sat, 03 Sep 2016 14:00:48 +0000

Pink Floyd responded in part to the punk rock movement’s fast, short, and aggressive tunes by… putting out an LP with five complex and relatively languid songs, three of which are longer than 10 minutes. And it is awesome.

1977’s Animals is an album that’s best experienced as an album. I suppose you could play “Sheep” or “Pigs (Three Different Ones)” as stand-alones, but why would you? If you’ve never listened to this one, you need to clear an hour (actually about 45 minutes) and sit down and give it some attention.

More open source is good open source

Sun, 21 Aug 2016 00:02:38 +0000

A few days ago, Microsoft announced that it has released PowerShell under the MIT license for Linux (and Mac OS X). Perhaps surprisingly, this has brought a number of folks out of the woodwork to gripe about Microsoft… releasing something as open source.

Microsoft isn’t perfect, not by a long shot, but this is not Steve Ballmer’s Microsoft. This isn’t Bill Gates’ Microsoft. The days when Microsoft and the open source community are mortal enemies are behind us. (At least for now, anyway. Companies don’t always move in a straight line.) The company still has plenty of flaws (its position on software patents, its Windows 10 update policies, for example), but the knee-jerk “anything Microsoft does is terrible!” attitude needs to go.

"Bachelor No. 2 or, the Last Remains of the Dodo" by Aimee Mann (No. 54)

Thu, 18 Aug 2016 12:15:25 +0000

Bachelor No. 2 is the album that, if Interscope had its way, wouldn’t have been released at all. Instead, Aimee Mann bought the rights back and released it on her own through her website – a gutsy move in 2000, but it paid off for Mann and her fans.

Most of Mann’s albums make me unreasonably happy, but Bachelor No. 2 is wall-to-wall awesome. Let’s start with the opening track, “How am I Different?” It’s a perfect album opener, starting just with acoustic guitar, light drums, piano, and Mann’s voice. After a couple of verses, the music swells and carries you away. I love everything about this song, the melody, the bluesy guitar, Mann’s voice, and the lyrics. “Just one question before I pack, when you fuck it up later, do I get my money back?”

"I'm Your Man" by Leonard Cohen (No. 56)

Tue, 16 Aug 2016 15:20:28 +0000

There are two kinds of people: Those who appreciate Leonard Cohen, and those who are wrong. I present as evidence Cohen’s eighth studio album, I’m Your Man.

Released in 1988 with heavy use of synthesizers and drum machines/electronic drums, I’m Your Man should sound dated. Indeed, if you focus on the backing tracks for the songs on this album, you’ll notice the distinctive sound of cutting-edge mid-80s technology. But it’s the songs, the lyrics, and the voices that propel I’m Your Man – and Cohen’s voice, the lyrics, and his backing chorus are timeless.

Unisex bathrooms aren’t the answer

Thu, 28 Apr 2016 00:39:21 +0000

One of the popular responses to the outcry over HB2 has been to suggest that unisex or single bathrooms are the “answer” or a “middle road” (or “common sense”) to avoid conflict over transgender folks using the bathroom that best fits their gender identity. Really, it’s a dodge that doesn’t solve anything socially, and is logistically and fiscally unrealistic.

First, I would love it if all public spaces had private, single-person bathrooms. Not because I’m in any way uncomfortable with transgender folks — but because I’ve never really loved public bathrooms to begin with. Who wouldn’t prefer to be alone when using the bathroom? (And don’t even get me started on urinals…)

What good is open source nobody knows about?

Fri, 30 Oct 2015 00:17:09 +0000

Here’s a pet peeve of mine, because I see it time and time again: Folks work on software or projects, put in a ton of effort, and then do nothing to promote the project or release. (And, for bonus points, complain that they don’t understand why the project isn’t getting more attention!)

This doesn’t mean developers have to do double-duty as marketeers and public relations folks. Well, not if they can pass the torch onto interested contributors who are happy to do it for them, anyway. It requires a little coordination and effort, but why put all the work into a project and then not get the attention of the users (and potential contributors) you’re trying to reach?

What every admin should know about email

Wed, 06 Nov 2013 00:10:01 +0000

Email is a fantastic tool, when used correctly. It almost never is. Rikki Endsley asked me if I’d like to write something for USENIX ;login; logout, and it happened to be right after processing a slew of terrible email: people sending two-line replies at the end of several hundred lines of text, inexcusable top-posting, HTML-ized email sent to lists that reject HTML email (rightly), etc.

Practicing a little courtesy when doing email takes a little extra time, but it makes it so much easier for the people who have to read your email.

Apple’s “Pathological” Approach to Customers

Mon, 04 Nov 2013 17:09:28 +0000

I think Lawrence Lessig puts his finger on it pretty well with this post about the problems with Apple’s “communication” strategy about bugs/feature removal in upgrades:

But the argument I want to advance here is different. It is that in the “hybrid economy” that the Internet is, there is an ethical obligation to treat users decently. “Decency” of course is complex, and multi-faceted. But the single dimension I want to talk about here is this: They must learn to talk to us. In the face of the slew of either bugs or “features” (because as you’ll see, it’s unclear in some cases whether Apple considers the change a problem at all), a decent company would at least acknowledge to the public the problems it identifies as problems, and indicate that they are working to fix it.

Joining Red Hat

Mon, 19 Aug 2013 13:00:59 +0000

When you think of Linux, one of the first phrases that comes to mind is “Red Hat.” When people look to give examples of successful open source businesses, Red Hat is always (rightfully) at the top of the list. They are one of the few (if not only) companies of size that don’t hold back the good bits (e.g. “open core”) and invest heavily in many, many upstream open source projects.

In Which I Finally Install AdBlock

Sat, 03 Aug 2013 14:08:00 +0000

For years, I’ve resisted installing AdBlock or any other type of ad-blocking software. Not because I love ads, but because so much content is ad-supported (including content I used to write) and there wasn’t a clear way to support “free” content otherwise.

What finally drove me over the edge wasn’t an actual “ad” at all, but the affiliate network run by Taboola. You know the ones, you can’t visit many popular sites without seeing something like this:

Predictions on Tumblr

Thu, 23 May 2013 13:21:32 +0000

If you haven’t heard that Yahoo is buying Tumblr for $1.1 billion (mostly cash), then you’re probably not paying a lot of attention to tech news.

Here’s my off-the-cuff predictions:

Despite Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer’s promise, yes, Yahoo will screw it up. A company that can’t seem to get a grip on its own direction isn’t going to be able to execute on integrating a new company with such a different personality and sizable user base without effing it up. Most acquisitions don’t do well, and in its entire history, I’ve yet to see Yahoo do well by an acquisition. Mayer has not explained why this will be any different.
Yahoo will futz with the Tumblr terms of service soon to disallow a lot of the content (read: adult content) that drives Tumblr.
At some point, Yahoo will insist on integrating the account systems between the two companies.
Yahoo will start pushing ads into Tumblr, pissing off the Tumblr user base.
Yahoo will be a target for copyright vultures going after content being reshared on Tumblr that isn’t being shared legally.

The Tumblr folks will make out like bandits and walk away from Yahoo the moment they’re contractually able to. Yahoo will have overpaid for a property it doesn’t know what to do with, and Yahoo will continue flailing.

Changed history forever

Fri, 23 Nov 2012 14:00:17 +0000

People often try to fluff up the importance of an event or person by saying it “changed history,” “changed the course of history,” or “changed history forever.” (Or something along those lines, you get the idea.) There’s just one problem with that type of phrase: it’s completely, 100% wrong.

History is stuff that has already happened, or the study of stuff that’s already happened. No matter what you do today – no matter how important or how much it upsets the expectations one might have for events to come – unless you’ve invented time travel and actually gone back in time and changed the past you have not changed history at all.

Thoughts on jury duty

Fri, 14 Sep 2012 11:43:05 +0000

Living in the city of St. Louis, the odds are that you’re going to be called for jury duty pretty frequently. From most of the folks I’ve talked to, it’s about every two years, if not more often.

I moved back to Missouri in June of 2010, and got my first summons for jury duty for July or August of 2012, so… that sounds about right. Because of work, I had to postpone jury duty, and wound up serving this past week. Here’s how it went. Trigger Warning I was assigned to a jury for a sexual assault case, so if discussion of the circumstances of a sexual assault are likely to upset you, you’ll want to skip this post.

9 phrases we should stop seeing in tech journalism

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 14:00:41 +0000

“ This reporter” – Just use the first person. It might have worked for Edward R. Murrow, but with tech journalism – particularly blogs – it sounds like a ridiculous affectation. If you wouldn’t say it out loud when retelling a story, don’t write it. (And if you would say this out loud when telling a story, seek professional help.)
“ The company told Acme Publication” – Bullshit. The publication is an abstract entity. Nobody “tells a publication” anything. People talk to reporters, and it’s OK to actually acknowledge that a human exchange took place rather than subsuming the reporter’s place in a story to a drone in the service of a publication. It’s 2012, embrace 1st person voice already.
“ The company said in a statement” – OK, sometimes (but very rarely) there’s an excuse for using this. However, I don’t really care for quoting company statements. Few things scream “rehashed press release” more than just throwing in quotes from press releases/statements. Most publications I’ve written for have strict policies against using quotes from press releases. Either talk directly to the source and try to get more than is in the press release, or just don’t bother quoting them at all.
“ Future plans” – This is just a pet peeve. All plans are future plans. Just say plans. (You also don’t need to indicate that something is your personal opinion. Just say “my opinion,” OK?)
“ Smith believes that” – Really? Are you a psychic? I didn’t think so. It’s impossible for a reporter to know what a source thinks. Maybe the source really believes their company is going to have a great quarter despite losing 2/3rds of their engineering team and having no cash on hand to pay the rest of the engineering team and sales folks. Steve Ballmer may believe that the iPhone has “lost its cool.” More likely, they’re bullshitting you. It’s OK to quote a source saying they believe something, but asserting that they believe something is sloppy.
“ Exclusive” – No one cares.
“ Anything-killer” – I’ve probably done this myself, so mea culpa. But this is so over-used now, and so very often wrong. Mostly, though, it’s the binary nature of the argument that I find most objectionable. It’s possible for two successful products of similar types to co-exist.
“ Is X the New Y?” – No, it’s not. Especially in reference to all the “is X the new Microsoft?” That implies that, you know, Microsoft has stopped being Microsoft, which isn’t at all in evidence. (I suspect even Microsoft would agree with me on that…)
Other cliches and over-used phrases – It’s not entirely fair to slam writers for using stock phrases when they’re writing several articles a day. Many tech editors and writers complain about headlines that are over-used are dealing with simple fatigue from reading far more headlines/articles than most people. But, some phrases really do need to be culled. For example, “ controversy swirled.” This might have been a dramatic and interesting turn of phrase once, but it’s just tired now.

Writing ledes, writing for feeds…

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 13:18:36 +0000

Too many ledes in tech publications and blogs suck. I’ve been doing more editing and more content curation lately. The upshot of that is noticing a lot of really boring, fluffy, slow-to-the-point ledes that utterly fail at drawing the reader in. It’s not hard to do a decent lede as long as you remember a few guidelines and take the time to revise.

Assume you have less than 150 words to make your case. Many sites that aggregate content from RSS like to pick a short excerpt from the beginning of the article. Make the first 150 count.
Your lede should give the reader some idea what the topic of the piece is. By name. Don’t stammer about for 200 words without getting the topic of the piece into the lede. If you’re going to write about Eclipse, the lede shouldn’t be 300 words on the history of Java IDEs without using the word “Eclipse” even once.
Don’t assume the reader is checking out the lede on the site it lives on, or that the reader is a follower of your blog/column/whatever. Always assume that the reader is completely new to your publication and byline. They don’t care what you wrote yesterday, so an introduction like “following my article yesterday,” is pure fail.
It’s great to tell the reader what to expect from a piece, without actually using the words “this article will.” Boring. Tell the reader how a tutorial will benefit them, don’t say “this article will tell you…” — you might as well sing them a lullaby instead.
It’s OK not to disclose the outcome of a story from the lede, but you should at least identify the players and give a general clue as to what the story is about.
There’s an age-old rule in newsrooms (the Kann Rule) that you shouldn’t start a lede with “I” — this is mainly in reference to journalism where reporters are discouraged from putting themselves in the story. It’s still a good rule, and you should think hard about whether a reader cares deeply about your experience.

I could go on, and on… again, not saying that my ledes are the best in the world, but there’s great, good, passable, and horrible. I’ve been seeing a lot more “horrible” lately. At some point I might put up some examples when I can take the time to look for examples outside the immediate range of publications I read where it’s likely to offend the writer who crafted the sucky lede. Just to mollify anyone reading this post — you may think this post is about your writing, it’s not. Well, not any one person, anyway. This is something that’s been building for a few weeks.

The Party of Gno

Wed, 16 Jun 2010 13:00:31 +0000

It’s time for the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and other free software supporters to stop being the Party of Gno, and start thinking of positive ways to push for software freedom. The negative campaigns and telling users what not to use aren’t working. It’s time for change.

Let me start off by saying, I agree with the FSF’s basic mission and philosophy. I want to see free software, not just open source, succeed. Open source has really already succeeded. Look at any organization and you’ll see it using open source. Look at any major company involved in the software industry, including Microsoft, and you’ll see it contributing to open source to some degree. Much of the infrastructure we all use on the Internet every day is open source, and it will continue to grow.

Containers vs. Hypervisors: Choosing the Best Virtualization Technology

Tue, 13 Apr 2010 15:56:37 +0000

Choosing a virtualization solution isn’t always easy. The good news is you have many choices to pick from. The bad news is, well, pretty much the same thing. You’ll find tons of options for Linux, most of which break down to hypervisor or container-based virtualization. Not sure which is which? We’ll break it down.

Unfortunately, the various vendors that offer virtualization (say that five times fast) don’t always agree on terminology. You’ll also find several different types of hypervisor virtualization, depending on the solution and hardware that are being used. For simplicity’s sake, I’m going to refer a bit broadly to the different types of virtualization. For most types of virtualization, I’ll refer to hypervisor virtualization. For virtualization at the operating system level, I’ll refer to container-based virtualization. Note also that I’m mainly looking at server virtualization on commodity x86/x86-64 hardware here. The options are even more diverse if you’re working with platforms like IBM’s System z mainframes.

Thoughts on the iPad

Sun, 04 Apr 2010 15:48:24 +0000

Yes, like thousands of others yesterday I decided to plunk down a little cash for a spanking new iPad. Like thousands of others, I figured I’d give a couple of quick thoughts on my experience with it so far.

I’m looking at the iPad in a couple of ways: As a writer, as a journalist, as a geek and sometimes system administrator, and as an open source advocate.

Naturally, the iPad is unsatisfying for open source folks. It’s a device. It’s not really meant to be tinkered with by the end user – and I’d agree it’s not really well-designed to encourage people to create software. Some folks have argued that the device isn’t designed for creators at all, and I have to disagree with that.

More "bad" English, please

Mon, 22 Mar 2010 16:00:44 +0000

I’d like to see more bad English on mailing lists, and fewer apologies from non-native speakers about their poor English skills. There’s nothing to be ashamed of in trying to communicate in a second, third, or fourth language and not being an expert. And it’d be a shame if non-native speakers let fear or embarrassment hold them back from making a vital contribution or asking a question that could help them succeed in contributing or using FLOSS tools.

RMS says GPLv2 isn’t good enough to protect MySQL (but it is)

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 13:30:31 +0000

I was surprised, to say the least, this morning to read Simon Phipps’ tweet that “ Richard Stallman and others declare GPL inadequate to protect software freedom.” Lack of caffeine, maybe? Nope. Stallman and Knowledge Ecology International really have sent a letter to the European Commission saying that Oracle shouldn’t be permitted to acquire MySQL in its merger with Sun.

Why? Because Oracle would then be the only party able to release MySQL under licenses that are not the GPL, and because Oracle could prevent MySQL from forking under a license other than GPLv2.

Corporate sponsors and event funding: Ask early, not often

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 13:16:14 +0000

If you’re hoping to get sponsorship funds for your event, it’s better to ask early than to ask often. And even better to ask professionally…

For larger companies ( i.e., the ones that actually do have a fair amount of cash for sponsorships) it is vitally important to ask early about sponsorships. Especially for events that are not yet established. Annual events like LinuxTag fall more easily into budget planning because you can establish a baseline for funding those events and plan year to year whether it’s worth attending and how much it actually costs. In addition to sponsorship, companies have to factor in travel, shipping, materials, etc. — the costs of participating in a conference are not limited to the funds that are put in for sponsorship.

Quick update

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 20:32:45 +0000

If this blog was a child, family services would have taken it away by now…

Sorry for the blog neglect, life’s been a whirlwind of activity for the last month or so. For those of you who don’t know already — I switched jobs at the beginning of September.

I’m now working as the editor-in-chief of Linux Magazine (the original, accept-no-substitutes Linux Magazine, by the way), which is an awesome gig. However, with “awesome” comes a lot of work and a lot of getting up to speed on doing things the print way. After years of doing the online publishing thing, print is a whole new world. (” Word count? What’s that? What do you mean we have to fill space / cut word count? How, exactly, can a paragraph have an orphan?”)

It's time to retire the mom test

Sat, 08 Sep 2007 15:05:07 +0000

One of the more humorous ad series today is the Geico “caveman” commercials, featuring a caveman complaining about the stereotype of something being “so easy a caveman could do it.” Since we don’t have to worry about offending cavemen (or cavewomen), companies can safely poke humor at that demographic group and not worry about alienating anyone. However, you might want to think twice about saying “it’s so easy your mom can do it.”

Tips: Making Vim easy

Tue, 10 Apr 2007 12:00:03 +0000

Vim’s flexibility and countless features are a major asset for experienced users, but a challenge for newbies. If you’ve always wanted to try Vim but were put off by your first attempts, you can start off gradually by getting to know Vim’s GUI and easy mode. This article is a primer for those who haven’t used Vim much and want to wade in gradually.

If you’re new to Vim and vi-like editors, the Vim GUI is probably the best way to get started. You can perform the operations you’re familiar with using Vim’s keybindings, but when you get stuck, you can use the mouse and the gVim menus to get things done quickly and efficiently.

Peak vs. Pique

Mon, 26 Feb 2007 14:48:11 +0000

Here’s another writing pet peeve — when folks confuse peak (or peek), and pique. Here’s an example of proper usage: I live in Denver, Colorado, so I have a lovely view of the mountain peaks when I look to the West, but my interest is piqued when I find a good book about world history.

Instead, what I see most commonly is “this really peaked my interest,” or “I thought this would peek your interest.”

WordPress 2.1

Mon, 05 Feb 2007 15:43:55 +0000

After coming back from Linux.conf.au last week (I stayed in Sydney an extra week for vacation) I noticed that the WordPress folks had released 2.1 while I was busy getting sunburned. I’ve upgraded my blog to 2.1 and all went well.

Definitely worth a look if you’re the blogging type. I’ve got a review up on Linux.com. This release includes a couple of nice improvements — nothing Earth-shattering, but some nice stuff, nonetheless.

Vim tips: Using tabs

Wed, 24 Jan 2007 13:00:56 +0000

Before Vim 7.0 was released last May, I usually had six or seven xterms or Konsole windows open, each with a single Vim session in which I was editing a single file. This takes up a lot of screen space, and isn’t very efficient. With Vim 7.0, users now have the option of using tabs within Vim. With Vim’s tab features you can consolidate all your sessions into one window and move between files more easily.

All mail clients suck…

Wed, 13 Dec 2006 01:58:26 +0000

Mutt just happens to be one of the mail clients that sucks less. I’d been getting tired of Sylpheed lately, so I decided to try out several text mail clients and see how they fit my email volume.

Part of the fruits of my labor is this tutorial on configuring Mutt’s behavior. If you’ve ever thought about running Mutt, but were put off by the amount of configuration required and the paucity of howto material online, the tutorial just might help.

Training your Mutt

Tue, 12 Dec 2006 14:01:49 +0000

Mutt is a great mail client, in large part because it is extremely customizable. You can tweak Mutt’s behavior and have it do tricks that are nearly impossible to do with other mail clients – but it can be a bit daunting to get started with. Let’s take Mutt on a short trip to mail client obedience school and see how easy it can be to make Mutt handle mail just the way you want it to.

Vim tips: Working with external commands

Wed, 25 Oct 2006 15:00:11 +0000

Vim is a powerful editing tool, but there are some things it just can’t do. However, Vim lets you access shell commands and utilities without leaving Vim, and that lets you perform some amazing tricks.

If you run :shell or just :sh while you’re in the editor, Vim (or Gvim, if you’re partial to Vim’s GUI) will place you in an interactive shell. You can run whatever commands you want, and resume your Vim session by exiting the shell.

Oh noes! The command line!

Mon, 28 Aug 2006 00:40:09 +0000

Just reading Mark Shuttleworth’s response to Matt Zimmerman’s summation of the community’s expectations of the Ubuntu Dapper Drake 6.06 LTS release. One thing stuck out about Zimmerman’s comments, that’s the complaint that users still have to use the command line for some tasks.

I know, the Holy Grail for a lot of users is to be able to pointy click their way through life, and that’s just a bar that Linux will be measured by no matter what, but I find it odd that so many users seem to have such a deep fear of text. Or is it the command line that they fear?

Vim tips: Using Vim mappings and abbreviations

Wed, 14 Jun 2006 15:00:03 +0000

Vim ships with a lot of useful functions that make life easier when you’re editing text, but Vim is also an extremely extensible editor. If you find yourself typing the same long commands or strings of text over and over again, it’s time you learned how to set mappings and abbreviations in Vim, to save valuable keystrokes for your code or prose.

Just as you can set shortcuts in KDE, you can map keystrokes to actions in Vim. A mapping can be as simple as creating an abbreviation that converts your initials to your full name, or something more complicated, like running a function when you press F10. Let’s take a look at mappings, and how they can make you much more productive when working in Vim.

Vim tips: Folding fun

Wed, 24 May 2006 15:00:53 +0000

The problem with writing and editing on a computer, versus having words on paper, is that it’s usually hard to compare text from different sections of a document when they don’t fit on the screen together. One way to do it is to use Vim’s viewports feature. Another is to “fold” the text. Using Vim’s folding features, you can tuck away portions of a file’s text so that they’re out of sight until you want to work with them again. Here’s how.

Vim tips: Moving around using marks and jumps

Wed, 17 May 2006 15:49:06 +0000

Editing in Vim can be a breeze, if you know how to make use of its more advanced features. Moving around files can feel like a slog if you’re stuck with the basic movement keys, but editing is effortless when you have command of marks and jumps.

Basically, a mark is a bookmark or placeholder that allows you to return to a spot in the file where you were editing. This can be handy when you’re working on longer projects, whether you’re writing a long paper, making changes to your Apache configuration, or writing code.

Vim tips: Using viewports

Wed, 10 May 2006 15:18:44 +0000

A lot of folks use Vim, but many exploit only a small percentage of the editor’s features. Sure, you might know how to do the basics in Vim, but what about using more advanced features such as folding, split windows, and marks? With a little practice, you can really boost your productivity with Vim.

In this and future articles, I’m going to cover Vim features that you may not be familiar with if you’re a casual Vim user. If you’re confident using Vim to edit configuration files or make short edits in text files, but maybe not too comfortable with undertaking major writing or coding in Vim, then these articles should be for you.

First look at Vim 7

Tue, 02 May 2006 14:58:51 +0000

The final release of Vim 7 is just around the corner, and it brings a number of new features to the venerable editor, including spell checking, omni completion for several programming and markup languages, tab pages, undo branches, and several other features that are worth upgrading for.

To test Vim, I compiled the 7.0f beta release on Ubuntu Breezy and used it for my day-to-day work for several days. I had been using Vim 6.3, so moving to Vim 7.0 wasn’t too drastic. I was relieved to find that I didn’t run into any show-stopper bugs or instability while I was working with Vim. It hasn’t eaten any files, and none of the new features exhibit major bugs.

How to make money writing, the query letter (or email…)

Sat, 22 Apr 2006 21:04:03 +0000

Prior to taking the job I have now as editorial director for Linux.com, I was a freelancer for about six years, writing for Linux Magazine, Enterprise Linux Magazine, UnixReview.com, Linux Weekly News, IBM developerWorks, ZDNet, and a few others.

I thought I’d share a few tips here that might help prospective authors get a little work on the side, or maybe even start up a freelancing career of their own.

Two years with WordPress

Tue, 03 Jan 2006 00:59:12 +0000

I started this blog in 2004, with WordPress 1.0. The domain is older than that, I ran Dissociated Press using a few other blogging tools, like phpWebLog, Slash, and (briefly) Blosxom, but WordPress is the only tool that I’ve been consistently happy with. (Which is not to say that it’s perfect or anything, but it’s been very, very good.)

The WordPress folks released WordPress 2.0 last month, and I’m pretty impressed with the new features and improvements. If you’re looking for blogging software, I’d recommend taking a look at WordPress 2.0. If you’re looking for a free blog hosting service, you might want to take a look at WordPress.com, it’s free and ridiculously easy to set up an account.

What Jerks…

Tue, 28 Sep 2004 21:05:20 +0000

Okay, so I read on Slashdot (is a link really necessary?) that Microsoft has put up a program called FlexWiki under an Open Source license… a real OSI-approved license, not just some evil license that they’re calling Open Source.

Well, you don’t see that every day, so I head over to the site to check it out. Now, if you’re not familiar with Wikis the concept is that (by default) anyone can edit them. Helps for all kinds of projects to allow open editing, and most Wiki software has version control built in so the community can roll back or remove changes that are detrimental.

The Open Road: Ethereal

Tue, 24 Aug 2004 21:08:39 +0000

This month, I’m going to wrap up discussion of network troubleshooting tools. So far, I’ve covered netstat, tcpdump, and ngrep and sniff. This month, I’ll discuss Ethereal, a tool for browsing network traffic interactively and analyzing network traffic. To put it more emphatically, Ethereal is the all-singing, all-dancing, packet-inspecting tool that all admins should have in their software toolboxes.

Ethereal is capable of capturing packets for analysis or reading saved packet captures in a number of common formats. Ethereal support libpcap/tcpdump, Sun’s snoop/atmsnoop, LanAlyzer, MS Network Monitor, HPUX nettl, AIX iptrace, Cisco Secure IDS, and a number of others. (The full list can be found in the FAQ.) Ethereal supports more than 530 network protocols. You can also see supported protocols by selecting “Supported Protocols” from Ethereals Help menu.

Jargon mumble synergy!

Wed, 09 Jun 2004 01:07:48 +0000

How is it that companies that spend millions on product development seem incapable of hiring someone who can write clear, concise product descriptions?

Been working on a project for the past week that involves churning through tons of product descriptions from various companies. I can say with authority that the products, if they are selling well, are selling despite the marketing materials. This also goes for press releases. Just in case any of the folks who are writing this copy happen to read this site, here are a few tips:

The Open Road: Linux System Performance Tools

Sat, 15 May 2004 13:07:17 +0000

This month, I’ll present a few system tools that can be helpful when trying to diagnose your Linux system’s health, improve performance, and so on. This installment is intended for users who are newer to Linux, and who might not be familiar with, or aware of all the utilities that are already available at their fingertips.

I often feature tools that are not included by default on a Linux system in the Tool of the Month column, but this installment of Open Road will present some utilities that are part of a “standard” Linux install, or at least packaged and available for most Linux distros — whether they’re actually installed by default, or not. I’m specifically thinking of Debian here, since a minimal Debian install won’t include several of the utilities covered this month. Not to fear, though — they’re just an apt-get away!

Tool of the Month: cdargs

Thu, 15 Jan 2004 18:47:43 +0000

This month, I’ll discuss cdargs, a tool that simplifies using the command line. cdargs is a handy little utility that provides browsing and bookmarks for cd.

Installing and using cdargs

I just recently dicovered cdargs, but it’s already proved to be a great application and big time-saver. It’s also easy to set up — just grab the source tarball and unpack it. Run configure ; make then su to root and run make install-strip. I’m using cdargs on SUSE 9.0, but it should compile just fine on most recent Linux distros. (I’m not sure about the portability for *BSDs or other Unixes.)

Perl history and plans for the Parrot next-generation interpreter

Thu, 13 Feb 2003 13:00:03 +0000

Change can be scary, especially for those who have grown accustomed to the status quo over a period of several years. And in the programming world, sweeping change is brewing. Perl 6 is a fairly ambitious redesign of both the Perl language and the Perl interpreter, so Perl 5 developers may be a bit nervous about the prospect of drastic changes, which NewsFactor explored in Part 1 of this story. But Allison Randal, one of the Perl 6 design team members, told NewsFactor that programmers have little to worry about.

Perl history: A look at the plans for Perl 6 evolving from Perl 5

Wed, 12 Feb 2003 14:00:54 +0000

Perl is somewhat unique among programming languages, largely because its inventor, Larry Wall, wanted his creation to resemble a natural language. For the most part, he has succeeded; Perl has evolved quite like a natural language since its inception in 1987, adapting to changing circumstances and a growing developer community. However, unlike with a natural language, Wall has always been the primary force behind Perl’s design and revisions.

Now, Wall is taking another step closer to his ideal. Instead of trying to generate all the ideas for Perl 6 on his own, Wall asked the Perl community to submit Requests for Comment (RFCs) on suggestions for the language. As he said during one of his so-called “State of the Onion” speeches, “Perl 5 was my rewrite of Perl. I want Perl 6 to be the community’s rewrite of Perl….”

What Python Can Do for the Enterprise

Mon, 03 Feb 2003 14:34:13 +0000

With all the attention focused on Java and C#, companies may be missing out on a programming language that might be better suited to their needs. That language is called Python.

In technical terms, Python is a high-level, open source programming language that promises rapid development and a low barrier to entry for non-programmers. In other words, it is relatively easy to learn and use – no small feat for a programming language. But can it crack the enterprise market?

Nuclear winter? More like global warming

Tue, 19 Nov 2002 13:00:48 +0000

Is mainstream acceptance for Open Source a " nuclear winter" for the software industry? I certainly hope so.

Some argue that Open Source and Free Software are best left as a niche market, and that widespread acceptance of software without license fees will harm the economy. Certainly, widespread adoption of Linux, OpenOffice and other freely available software would be harmful to the bottom line of certain companies, but would it be harmful to the economy overall?