I hate it when this happens...
A few days ago my server's hardware died. I have been putting it back together but not yet 100% done. I think I now have everything major back online, at least in the blogs area. I think a couple of comments may have gotten lost, but that all the articles are back.
2008: A Year of Tipping Points?
I meant to write this for New Year's but got distracted. Perhaps it's a case of "better late than never". I predicted that 2008 will be a year of several "tipping points".
First the Good News: I had planned to say that 2008 would be the year that Blu-ray definitively toppled HD-DVD in the realm of next-generation DVD players. And it sure looks like I was right on that one. Last year, North-America-wide DVD rental chain Blockbuster Video made the jump. In January of this year, Warner Brothers made the switch. Then in ten days in February, Netflix, Best Buy and Wal-Mart crossed over. So, despite some expensive research firms claims that the format wars will drag on into 2009, I hereby pronounce that it's all over for HD-DVD. Sorry if you bought an HD player and disks before the battle was over, but it's good news for everybody else - now that the format wars are over (even Toshiba seems almost ready to admit defeat, and has apparently decided to quit, according to unnamed sources) - consumers will be willing to buy in, and we can start getting "smart" DVDs into widespread circulation. Oh, and if you happen to be a Java developer or a content developer, check out hdcookbook, a freely-available collection of resources for making Blu-ray DVDs. As far as hardware to make your own, there is Sony's BWU-2005 (retails at $599.99 on SonyStyle; somewhat laughably, there are currently a few listed above retail on eBay).
Of course all is not brightness and cheer at the Blu-ray camp. There have been significant problems of compatibility and functionality in some early players, as well as the expected usual patent-based gold-diggers. And Netflix has something else up their sleeve. Worse, Blu-ray's official web site's press page hasn't been updated since October 2005 - seems somebody there gave up too early :-).
The Bad News: I thought that 2008 might be the year that the United Stats officially became a Police State. it looks like I was right here too. The US Senate passed a bill, wanted by their his-own-word-is-law abiding president, to grant immunity to large telecom companies that illegally gave private customer data including real-time access to all US internet traffic) to the government, simply because the government asked them to. "What? That was illegal? No problem, we'll just pass a law making it legal retroactively." Just as they have wanted for years to be able to make other actions illegal retroactively. The Rule of Law doesn't just mean having laws, it means respecting them, and being able to know objectively what is legal and what is not. Bush's minions want to eliminate your ability to know whether something you're about to do is legal or not. Welcome to the nightmare world of subjective law.
Now fortunately this bill didn't get signed into law, but only because some Democrats in the House of Representatives had enough guts... well, not to vote it down, but to vote to adjourn for the Presidents' Day week-long holiday, knowing that the bill will expire during this time. We've not seen the last of this bill. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely, and George Bush is addicted to it, and will stop at nothing to get it. He will probably remain president until the end of his term, unless he can engineer a state of emergency for November. And that gives him half a dozen months to ram this bill through. Overall the political scene looks rather bleak for 2008. And the US may yet tip over into police state territory. You might want to get a copy of this guide to citizen democracy while you can still download it.
In an ironic counterpoint, a Liberian pop dive has a new song out telling George Bush "thank you for the rule of law". The article notes that Africans hold Bush in much higher regard than do Americans; we all know which group gets a closer and better look at him.
The Uncertain News: Hopefully this will not also be a tipping point year for global climate change. Despite last year's heat (or maybe because of it?), this has been a record year for snowfall in eastern Canada. One of the cities in the Atlantic region, having boosted their snow-removal budget last year, had already used it all up by Valentines' Day this year. Perhaps there's still hope for the climate - but don't stop goin' green just yet!
So: watch for turmoil and tip-topping this year. Enjoy it, there'll be another year here soon enough.
First the Good News: I had planned to say that 2008 would be the year that Blu-ray definitively toppled HD-DVD in the realm of next-generation DVD players. And it sure looks like I was right on that one. Last year, North-America-wide DVD rental chain Blockbuster Video made the jump. In January of this year, Warner Brothers made the switch. Then in ten days in February, Netflix, Best Buy and Wal-Mart crossed over. So, despite some expensive research firms claims that the format wars will drag on into 2009, I hereby pronounce that it's all over for HD-DVD. Sorry if you bought an HD player and disks before the battle was over, but it's good news for everybody else - now that the format wars are over (even Toshiba seems almost ready to admit defeat, and has apparently decided to quit, according to unnamed sources) - consumers will be willing to buy in, and we can start getting "smart" DVDs into widespread circulation. Oh, and if you happen to be a Java developer or a content developer, check out hdcookbook, a freely-available collection of resources for making Blu-ray DVDs. As far as hardware to make your own, there is Sony's BWU-2005 (retails at $599.99 on SonyStyle; somewhat laughably, there are currently a few listed above retail on eBay).
Of course all is not brightness and cheer at the Blu-ray camp. There have been significant problems of compatibility and functionality in some early players, as well as the expected usual patent-based gold-diggers. And Netflix has something else up their sleeve. Worse, Blu-ray's official web site's press page hasn't been updated since October 2005 - seems somebody there gave up too early :-).
The Bad News: I thought that 2008 might be the year that the United Stats officially became a Police State. it looks like I was right here too. The US Senate passed a bill, wanted by their his-own-word-is-law abiding president, to grant immunity to large telecom companies that illegally gave private customer data including real-time access to all US internet traffic) to the government, simply because the government asked them to. "What? That was illegal? No problem, we'll just pass a law making it legal retroactively." Just as they have wanted for years to be able to make other actions illegal retroactively. The Rule of Law doesn't just mean having laws, it means respecting them, and being able to know objectively what is legal and what is not. Bush's minions want to eliminate your ability to know whether something you're about to do is legal or not. Welcome to the nightmare world of subjective law.
Now fortunately this bill didn't get signed into law, but only because some Democrats in the House of Representatives had enough guts... well, not to vote it down, but to vote to adjourn for the Presidents' Day week-long holiday, knowing that the bill will expire during this time. We've not seen the last of this bill. Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely, and George Bush is addicted to it, and will stop at nothing to get it. He will probably remain president until the end of his term, unless he can engineer a state of emergency for November. And that gives him half a dozen months to ram this bill through. Overall the political scene looks rather bleak for 2008. And the US may yet tip over into police state territory. You might want to get a copy of this guide to citizen democracy while you can still download it.
In an ironic counterpoint, a Liberian pop dive has a new song out telling George Bush "thank you for the rule of law". The article notes that Africans hold Bush in much higher regard than do Americans; we all know which group gets a closer and better look at him.
The Uncertain News: Hopefully this will not also be a tipping point year for global climate change. Despite last year's heat (or maybe because of it?), this has been a record year for snowfall in eastern Canada. One of the cities in the Atlantic region, having boosted their snow-removal budget last year, had already used it all up by Valentines' Day this year. Perhaps there's still hope for the climate - but don't stop goin' green just yet!
So: watch for turmoil and tip-topping this year. Enjoy it, there'll be another year here soon enough.
Now Digg This
It's easier than you might think.
Digg is, of course, a social networking site for rating blogs and other web resources. I just found a site that not only shows how to add a Digg button to one's blog, but applies to the particular blogging software I use, Pebble. Thanks to Patrick Melo for that blog hint!
Voting on the Unknowable
Thoughts on the US election year
No, this blog entry is not about whether Ms. Clinton or Mr. Obama will win or should win. It's about something more fundamental.
Some United States Citizens no doubt believe their country has free and fair elections. Some, perhaps, also still refuse to admit that they are no longer living in "the home of the brave and the land of the free". History may someday show that both problems are related to something simple, but apparently endemic: Voting Machine Fraud. While this tends not to get a lot of play in the US media, it turns out that apparently all the Diebold voting machines in the US, which makes up the majority of their voting machines, can be opened with the same key. Not a secret master key either. That is, if you're a voting clerk in San Francisco, you can install viruses on voting machines in Montana, or Kentucky, or New Hampshire. And where this really falls off the wall is that the company posted a photograph of this key on their web site that was good enough for a non-locksmith with some key blanks and a file to replicate. At least, according to BradBlog.
Now I don't have access to a Diebold voting machine to confirm this experiment; they aren't used in my country (yet). Nor do I have key blanks (I do have a file). And the URL shown near the bottom (now) redirects to Diebold's supply center; either because I don't have an account on that site or because Diebold changed it in response to the article. However, these guys at BradBlog/VelvetRevolution claim to be working with researchers at Princeton University, so there is some reason to lend them credence. The fact that Diebold apparently moved so quickly to change the web page tends to support the claim. And there are many other documented problems with the electoral system and especially the voting machines - see this documentary.
I just hope my own country doesn't try to switch away from reliable (e..g, paper) balloting.
Some United States Citizens no doubt believe their country has free and fair elections. Some, perhaps, also still refuse to admit that they are no longer living in "the home of the brave and the land of the free". History may someday show that both problems are related to something simple, but apparently endemic: Voting Machine Fraud. While this tends not to get a lot of play in the US media, it turns out that apparently all the Diebold voting machines in the US, which makes up the majority of their voting machines, can be opened with the same key. Not a secret master key either. That is, if you're a voting clerk in San Francisco, you can install viruses on voting machines in Montana, or Kentucky, or New Hampshire. And where this really falls off the wall is that the company posted a photograph of this key on their web site that was good enough for a non-locksmith with some key blanks and a file to replicate. At least, according to BradBlog.
Now I don't have access to a Diebold voting machine to confirm this experiment; they aren't used in my country (yet). Nor do I have key blanks (I do have a file). And the URL shown near the bottom (now) redirects to Diebold's supply center; either because I don't have an account on that site or because Diebold changed it in response to the article. However, these guys at BradBlog/VelvetRevolution claim to be working with researchers at Princeton University, so there is some reason to lend them credence. The fact that Diebold apparently moved so quickly to change the web page tends to support the claim. And there are many other documented problems with the electoral system and especially the voting machines - see this documentary.
I just hope my own country doesn't try to switch away from reliable (e..g, paper) balloting.
KDE4 - First Impressions
Visually impressive, and almost ready for prime time.
As most readers know I use the UNIX operating system, particularly OpenBSD, on all my computers. On desktops I flit about between several "desktop environments" or user interface systems. OpenBSD's default is a simple window manager called fvwm, but it also provides an extreme minimalist window manager called cwm. When I want a full-function GUI, I use KDE, one of the two mainstream UNIX desktops (the other is GNOME). I find KDE more intuitive than GNOME, and I also like the fact that its default configuration only has one icon/menu panel (GNOME has two, which is a nightmare on the 1280x800 laptop that is my main desktop), and it's at the bottom, with a start menu at the left (like that other OS from Redmond, which I have to use at some client sites). Linux founder Linus Torvalds agrees with my sentiment; his "Just Use KDE" comment a while back attracted a lot of attention.
I've used KDE 3 for several years on OpenBSD, so it's natural to expect a new major release. And indeed, KDE 4.0 was released in January 2008. And (thanks to work by Marc Espie) KDE 4 is now working on OpenBSD (although, because it's so new and because it can't easily co-exist with KDE 3, KDE 4 will probably not be included in the upcoming OpenBSD 4.3 release).
KDE4 is nothing if not innovative. The new desktop shell, Plasma, tries to move away from the old desktop-as-directory paradigm using more dynamic features, which you can read about here. It supports widgets, similar to those on Mac OS X but which can be written in any of half a dozen modern languages, not just JavaScript. The graphical effects are also quite impressive. Plus, it's faster at some operations; opening a file chooser on a large directory used to be painful, but is now quite fast.
So why do I say "almost ready for prime time"? First, I'm seeing some instability - Plasma disappears every so often and has to be restarted, for example, or kwin crashes and gets restarted - but these might be because the KDE developers are only coding for Linux, not for portability (though parts of KDE4 - not including Plasma - can also run on MS-Windows and Mac OS). However, more significant is that the system just doesn't feel "finished". Many of the optimizations and features (especially configuration) that we took for granted in 3.5 are not in 4.0 yet. For example:
I've used KDE 3 for several years on OpenBSD, so it's natural to expect a new major release. And indeed, KDE 4.0 was released in January 2008. And (thanks to work by Marc Espie) KDE 4 is now working on OpenBSD (although, because it's so new and because it can't easily co-exist with KDE 3, KDE 4 will probably not be included in the upcoming OpenBSD 4.3 release).
KDE4 is nothing if not innovative. The new desktop shell, Plasma, tries to move away from the old desktop-as-directory paradigm using more dynamic features, which you can read about here. It supports widgets, similar to those on Mac OS X but which can be written in any of half a dozen modern languages, not just JavaScript. The graphical effects are also quite impressive. Plus, it's faster at some operations; opening a file chooser on a large directory used to be painful, but is now quite fast.
So why do I say "almost ready for prime time"? First, I'm seeing some instability - Plasma disappears every so often and has to be restarted, for example, or kwin crashes and gets restarted - but these might be because the KDE developers are only coding for Linux, not for portability (though parts of KDE4 - not including Plasma - can also run on MS-Windows and Mac OS). However, more significant is that the system just doesn't feel "finished". Many of the optimizations and features (especially configuration) that we took for granted in 3.5 are not in 4.0 yet. For example:
- The "pager" feature that lets you have multiple virtual desktops. It seems to work almost exactly as in 3.5, with the annoying exception that you cannot get the page miniatures to display their names, only their numbers. The UI for "Configure Desktops" lets you assign names, but the UI for "Pager Settings" has only a checkbox for "Display the Desktop Number", nothing for "Display Desktop Name".
- Start Buttons. I like single buttons to start common applications. KDE3 had a very nice Konsole (terminal program) control applet for the task bar, for example. The "widgets" that have taken the place of Panel Applets currently consist of a much smaller set (8 or 10 instead of 30 or so), and don't appear to be installable on the panel. As it turns out, for programs, you can find the program in the menu, then right-click, and select Add to Panel. And for Widgets the same as I found out by searching forum sites: you can drag Widgets directly from the Add Widgets dialog to the Panel (but not from the Desktop to the Panel), and not all Widgets yet work correctly in the Panel. For programs, you can also select Add To Favorites, which puts it in the first section of the K Menu.
- For Programs or Widgets installed in the Panel, you have far less control over how the panel is laid out. This may be a conscious choice (see Decisions); if so it flies in the face of the desire for ultimate configurability.
- Gratuitous changes to Konsole (the terminal program; I must admit that at heart I'm sometimes a command-line guy) mean that my "terminal striping" - commands that put the system I'm logged into, and the current directory - don't work. I presume it's just a different set of escape sequences, but why change it?
- Clock - can't have a sub-list of selected timezones, have to pick from the entire list every time you move (painful for road warriors).
- Kopete, the Instant Messaging client, doesn't have IRC support (even though it did in 3.5.8, and even though the Kopete developers hang around on an IRC channel named #kopete :-); the code has only had one commit in the last month.
- Migration Wizard - there isn't one, though one has been discussed at the Ubuntu Forum.