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. ...
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: ...
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. ...
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. ...
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.
“ 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.
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. ...
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. ...
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. ...
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. ...