You know what I would find funny?

If all the userland tools and common packages like Samba were forked and maintained as GPLv2. Two developmental branches if you will. And if someone were to keep a repository of these forked projects.

And if that someone were Microsoft.

I just realised that on my home computer–internetless as it is right now, curse Bell–Windows has been relegated to a sort of seldom-used shared library sort of deal. I boot it up in virtualisation every once in a while when I want to compose something in Notion or… I can’t think of anything else right now.

Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, Skype, etc, are all exactly the same in Ubuntu. Compiz beats the pants off any other windowing system, period.

And Windows XP is that appliance I put in a box in a closet and don’t pay much attention to except when I need it, which is rarely.

It’s a beautiful thing really. The simplest of simple technologies gives me back the choice I want. As a fanboy might put it, I no longer bow before the golden calf of Redmond.

In our office, we have two Windows 2000 servers, both of which are working just fine and doing their jobs without undue strain on the hardware. I estimate we could keep both of them going and doing what they’re doing for another three years.

Microsoft, of course, has other ideas. Support has ended or is ending for Windows 2000–their most stable OS to date in my experience–and in order to keep a well-patched web-facing server alive, we have two choices. One, we upgrade to Server 2003, and replace the boxes as well, as they’re pretty old and probably won’t handle 2003. Two, we keep what we’ve got, understanding that if vulnerabilities are found, we’ll be, well, vulnerable. Either we pay out a large ($10,000 or so) sum to upgrade, or we cross our fingers and hope for the best.

We’re a small company with a small technology budget. Guess what we’re going to do? I hate crappy hardware and upgrade cycles; there’s no good reason that a well-made server and operating system shouldn’t run for ten years without breaking down or becoming out of date. And not something you need a forklift to move.

On a related note, what is it with operating systems and applications devouring RAM and disk space? I mean, I understand that computing is more complicated than it once was, but Windows 95–piece of all-dancing crap that it was–took something like 25mb of RAM to run. Something like that. These days, only Mac OSX gets faster with each release, and I’m not sure how they can keep that up. Linux gather more moss with each passing day, and Microsoft Windows is positively ballooning with each new and less-needed version.

I ask myself a simple question: what sort of insane processing power, HD space, and RAM will one need to simply check ones email in 2015?

I was floating around on the intertubes lately, and came across a blog post (so help me, every once in a while I read a blog or two) that claimed iTunes doesn’t suck.

But you know what? That post is wrong. iTunes sucked before, and it sucks now. I have had the unusually annoying experience of trying it out on a computer at work–you know, seconds chances and all that–but came away disappointed again. Let me address a few key points.

iTunes is a system hog.

It just is. Come on people, I know you like it, but let’s not deny the facts that I’m not going to support with numbers. Instead, a worthless anecdote: I initially installed iTunes on a grey box with a fresh vanilla XP install, and it used 46mb of memory fresh out of the box (so to speak). On my sister’s computer, with a large library, playing a good old MP3, it’s using 59mb. That’s far too much memory for something as basic as a music player. WinAmp, even with all the bells and whistles, doesn’t come anywhere close. Without the bells and whistles, it’s at a quarter of the memory used.

iTunes does too much stuff. But not enough stuff.

Really, people. iTunes is wildly functional. Extravagantly functional. It plays video, for crying out loud. It generates a thousand kinds of playlists. It has a built-in music store. &cetera. Except where it needs to be. When I want to write a plugin, how do I do this? How do I play a different codec than the limited pre-chosen selection? How do I easily manage multiple collections? Any player worth its salt–including Windows Media Player, the most worthless hunk of confusing crap ever imagined in the mind of man–can do these things. Why can’t iTunes? Sure, iTunes is pretty easy to use. It’s an MP3 player for crying out loud. But who cares if it does things easily if it doesn’t do what I want it to do at all?

Note to software designers: You will never be as inventive as those who use your software. Design for extensibility. It may be hard, but it will add value you can’t even imagine to your software, and allow those who use it to use it as they see fit.

Wait, I don’t want to use iTMS.

I don’t particularly like the iTunes Music Store. I mean, I know I can get restriction-free music for a buck thirty or so, and their selection is great. So maybe I want to use iTMS and a different music store in conjunction, or maybe not use iTMS at all. How do I do this inside the program?

iTunes is locked into this proprietary iPod -> iTunes -> iTMS channel and won’t let you exit the channel except by going outside the program. Do you see how silly this is? Imagine if you bought your car from Ford, and not only were you only allowed certain Ford-approved fuels, but you had to buy them from Ford-branded petrol stations. Or if you bought a Sony television and it could only be plugged into a Sony brand electrical socket with a patented electrical plug. You wouldn’t stand for that.

Now of course, people are going to say, “Well, iTunes can handle other music store’s MP3s!” Which it does. But that functionality is only a caveat from Apple, understanding that no one in the world would use a player that only played restricted media from iTMS.

So they went another route entirely. iTMS -> iTunes -> iPod is an easy way to buy music. It’s all integrated. You literally just click a couple times, and you’re done.

Boot up Firefox -> Log in to other music store -> Download -> Drag into iTunes -> iPod is decidedly less easy. So of course, only the people know alternatives exist will use said alternatives, and then only sometimes. This is Apple’s right, of course. It’s their software. They can do with it what they like, at least within the bounds of law. But that doesn’t mean that I have to like iTunes, or even use it. I’d much rather nurse an antipathy.

But you don’t have to listen to me. I may think iTunes is annoying and bloated, but you can keep using it. That’s your right. iTunes will fade into history like every other media player has, and eventually neither of will have to worry about it.

From an Ars Technica story, comes these ten inconvenient “truths” per the IFPI.

1. Pirate Bay, one of the flagships of the anti-copyright movement, makes thousands of euros from advertising on its site, while maintaining its anti-establishment “free music” rhetoric.

Probably. But to clarify, do the profit from it, or do they simple make enough money to cover the server and bandwidth related stuff? That’d be a nice question to answer. In any case, tPB’s rhetoric is its own, and I doubt many people who use it to facilitate their downloading actually care about the rhetoric.

2. AllOfMP3.com, the well-known Russian web site, has not been licensed by a single IFPI member, has been disowned by right holder groups worldwide and is facing criminal proceedings in Russia.

True. AllofMP3 is pretty much a skank joint, and if you’re buying music from them, you might as well just download it via The Pirate Bay.

3. Organized criminal gangs and even terrorist groups use the sale of counterfeit CDs to raise revenue and launder money.

This may be true, though who really knows. In any case, physical piracy is another beast altogether from digital piracy, and I’m not sure why it’s included on the list. You might remember that no one really (with the exception of the Pirate Bay and the people who index trackers) makes any money from digital piracy.

4. Illegal file-sharers don’t care whether the copyright-infringing work they distribute is from a major or independent label.

Doubtful, but what’s the point here? That people aren’t all a bunch of RIAA-boycotting freedom fighters? Sure. Free music is free music.

5. Reduced revenues for record companies mean less money available to take a risk on “underground” artists and more inclination to invest in “bankers” like American Idol stars.

Absolute hogwash of the worst kind. Record labels are some of the most conservative companies in the world. They’ve always been reticent to develop new artists vs milking cash cows, from the 1930s to today. If piracy went away this very minute, they’d still be doing it, because they’re entrenched companies and are scared of change.

6. ISPs often advertise music as a benefit of signing up to their service, but facilitate the illegal swapping on copyright infringing music on a grand scale.

Good, shoot the messenger. Is it not true that bandwidth providers also facilitate people downloading from iTunes and its ilk as well? Clearly these monsters must be stopped!

7. The anti-copyright movement does not create jobs, exports, tax revenues and economic growth–it largely consists of people pontificating on a commercial world about which they know little.

And here, ladies and gentlemen, is why so many people hate labels and copyright organisations. Because they don’t like anything that comes between their hand and your pocket. They don’t like piracy because it costs them money. They don’t like the internet because it makes sharing trivial and breaks up the cartel on physical distribution. They don’t like copyleft and Creative Commons because you generally don’t have to pay for these things, and because if there’s an ecosystem of free music out there, that means less revenue for the labels.

8. Piracy is not caused by poverty. Professor Zhang of Nanjing University found the Chinese citizens who bought pirate products were mainly middle- or higher-income earners.

Are you telling me that poor Chinese farmers with a subsistence living aren’t interested in downloading music from the internet? I’m socked. Shocked!

9. Most people know it is wrong to file-share copyright infringing material but won’t stop till the law makes them, according to a recent study by the Australian anti-piracy group MIPI.

This is partly true. The reality is, however, that even laws won’t stop them, because guess what, there are simply too many people for the law to deal with. Even in the US, where the most strict laws ever are in effect and the most piracy happens. Period. PS: A study by a group with a particular bias comes out supporting that particular bias? You. Don’t. Say.

10. P2P networks are not hotbeds for discovering new music. It is popular music that is illegally file-shared most frequently.

Which is what the labels fear the most. The most popular music is their cash-cow. Their big revenue stream. They don’t actually care about independent music as you might think from point number 4. What they actually care about is money. Pure, hard cash. And they’ll do anything (from suing their own customers to lobbying and bribing the US congress and by extension the world to making ever so slightly deceitful lists of “truths” to support their viewpoints) to make sure that these cash-cows are protected.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course. If you can get away with selling crap to people for $20 a pop, by all means, it’s a free country. But if it stops becoming a free country because you want to protect a revenue stream instead of inventing new revenue streams, then at least let’s stop wrapping the truth up in frilly pink dresses.

I mean, record labels can call pirates leeches who eat from their revenue streams, and the pirates can call labels leeches who bottomfeed off culture itself, but that doesn’t mean that it’s a binary issue where one side is right and the other wrong.

Call a spade a spade: they’re both wrong, they’re both scum, and they both deserve to disappear, both labels and pirates.

Okay, let me complain a bit here.

What is it with people writing emails in all caps? It’s like yelling, it’s impolite, and it doesn’t get your email noticed any better than if it were a politely worded note of reminder or whatever.

I’ve noticed this seems extremely prevalent in the business world, especially among secretaries and purchasers, and especially (though I hate to say this) female secretaries and purchasers.

To recap, when you TYPE LIKE THIS in an email, you are doing the equivalent of shouting. My inbox is the virtual equivalent of a sacred temple where people file in to have their requests granted one by one. Would you so disrespect a temple irl? I think not. But I am a benevolent master of that particular domain (if you pardon the sort-of pun). I won’t punish you.

Much.

According to a recent news story or twelve, Steve Ballmer (who leads Microsoft in some way that I’m too lazy to quantify) doesn’t think the iPhone will be a success.

Now, most of the people I know who are talking about this are simply waving it off as grandstanding, sour grapes, abject fear, or all of the above.

But I don’t think it is any of those things. In fact, I think Ballmer is right. He’s very right.

It all depends on how you define success.

For Microsoft, success clearly means being dominant in every market that it enters, for better or for worse, making money (Windows and Office are practically licenses to print money, if you’ll excuse the pun) or not making money (Xbox, Zune, etc). For Apple, success is much less clearly defined; they have something like 2.0% of computer buys worldwide.

Maybe Apple is following Nintendo’s lead: don’t be the 900 kilogram gorilla. Be the second, or third, or seventh in the market, but make money. Be a niche product, but be something people will want. In that, Apple and Nintendo are, I think, something of business strategy kin. They make good products that have that certain something, and though they may fail some of the time, in the end they’re still around, and while Sony and Microsoft try an create something that appeals to a wide range of people to create mass market penetration, they’re in the background grabbing the headlines and dominating side markets (portables gaming systems, portable music players).

It doesn’t always work that way, of course, but I really have to question the prevailing wisdom on this subject: what is the best long-term strategy for a company? I have to ask this for myself as well as thinking about Nintendo and Apple. Do I want a company that has mass market penetration, or a company that has niche products that have a certain something, or is it possible to do both?

It’s an interesting question. Look how long Nintendo has been around. Look how many market leaders in how many segments have risen, achieved dominance, and fallen back to “meh” level.

Back to the iPhone; if it costs $500 and only 1% of people buy into the platform, who cares? If Apple makes money off every single device, then they have 1% of the market. That’s what, 13 million phones? That’s a nice slice of profit right there, and a toehold into the market. So yeah, I think Steve and Steve are both right; it probably won’t be a success, but at the same time will probably be a great success.

This is how the future will come to you.

Industry and the government will begin suggesting fingerprint scanners, retina scanners, RFID chips, and closed circuit cameras. After all, industry wants to know what you do with your time in order to sell you stuff, and the government wants to know what you do with your time for national security interests, or to fight crime, or for whatever reason you insert there.

Both industry and government are exercising self-preservation and self-propagation. If you are more enticed to buy because adverts are better targeted to your individual preference, industry preserves and increases itself through your dollars. If you are less inclined to speak out about the government, less inclined to think independently, and less inclined to flex your rights, governments preserves and increases itself through annexing your former freedoms.

Once you’re used to fingerprint scanners on your appliances and gadgets, retinal scanners at your bank and ATM, RFID chips in your credit card and keyfob, and closed circuit cameras in high-crime neighborhoods, you’ll see them popping up everywhere, even in places where there isn’t a clear reason for them. You will be watched constantly, though a disorganized collection of devices, few of which are connected together.

In the meantime, your computer hardware will be standardized along a set of guidelines, ostensibly to provide better security and stability. Operating systems will begin to run only on this secure hardware platform. Everything else will adapt or die. Eventually, new protocols will be adopted, so that any non-compliant device won’t connect to the network. Slowly but surely everything on the internet will gain a real, physical address. Privacy and anonymity will disappear, the chilling effects of which will ensure that free speech will also begin to disappear. This push will again come from vendors (who desire software/hardware locking), the government (who don’t like the idea of anyone being able to do anything), and parents (who want to easily be able to monitor what their children are doing without any actual effort).

One day you’ll wake up and notice that all these databases have been linked together. Suddenly, you are being watched by the industrial/governmental establishment, along with everyone else, and there is nothing you can do. Your RFID chips are being tracked, your eyes are being scanned, your fingerprints are being read, and your face is being analyzed. You wake up one day and realize you have a chip in your arm, a chip in your car, a chip in your wallet, and a chip in your computer, none of which is directly controlled by you, and all of which you cannot escape.

The scary thing is that no one person is responsible for this. You won’t see a total information agency trying to scan everyone and spy on everyone all the time. There will be all these separate data streams, and one day some legislature or agency will come along and merge them into one.

And it will all be done for your security, your safety, and your children.

Thing is, this isn’t a bad idea. Probably the last thing you thought you’d see coming from my blog, right?

If there’s no way to exempt anyone from it, if there are no powerful men that are “excused” from the program, if it’s truly universal and truly egalitarian, it could be a very good thing. It could be a combination of personal history and personal witness.

The only question is this: could any human ever design such a system?

• The interface looks much cleaner, much neater. The new default icon set is at once less busy and more attractive, giving the application a much-needed facelift.
• Almost everything is in the same place as before. That’s good. Some functionality has been renamed. That’s alright.
• Tabs are good, but they’re essentially the same as the Labels they replace, a major exception being the ability to apply more than one Tag. Which is troublesome, actually, because they’re still numbered by what I can only assume is priority and have the ability to turn the subject line of your email different colours (a helpful visual clue for important messages, or simply marking which messages have been dealt with). But if you add more than one tag, the colour system obviously doesn’t follow. It remains the colour of the highest priority tag. I find this somewhat clumsy.
• Still on tabs here. If you add the “Tag” column to your second pane (as I’ve done), you can see what tags have been applied to your message. This is good, this is nice, but adding a tag to a message is still a three-click process, which is tedious, unless you remember what numbers are applied to which tags. Which is also clumsy. Tagging emails is a great feature, but let me show the Thunderbird developers what would make it an amazing feature: Allow me to click on the Tag Column portion of the second pane and have it turn into a text field (with a selectable tag list or tag cloud underneath) into which I can type and have Thunderbird autocomplete for me.
• Still on tags. Please, divide them up with something. Like a comma. Or a pipe. Or a slash. I don’t care. At least then they don’t look like a badly-formed sentence.
• The new mail notification is so much better than the old one, which was hopelessly broken beyond belief. It would report mail that was being marked as spam, mail that was routed directly to junk, mail that didn’t exist, and wouldn’t disappear from the system tray when the message it was reporting was clicked on (instead choosing to wait until I exited the folder). The new one seems to have solved these problems, is better to look at, and contains more information than simply “MAIL IS HERE HURR”.
• Folder summary popups are a nice feature. Don’t know if I’ll ever use it… except maybe when someone’s looking over my shoulder and I’ve got a barn-burner of an email coming in from my political dissident friends.
• Installation was fast, too. Surprisingly so.
• One last thing. Thunderbird needs a distributed installation system for Windows. I really don’t want to walk around to 20 desktops and make sure each one is dandy.

The fundamental issue with electronic voting machines versus paper ballots is not that fraud can happen, as some like to suggest. No, fraud has been around for a long time. As long as there has been elections, there has been election fraud.

The difference is the ease with which it can be done. And the scope of the effects.

I mean, you know how hard it is to keep things under wraps: two people can hardly keep a secret, no matter how insignificant. Imagine the army of people it would take to rig a paper ballot election. Now imagine all those people keeping that a secret. Something that big? No way. It’d be in the news in a week.

How many people does it take to rig an electronic election? I don’t know, but certainly not 100,000. Maybe two. Maybe three. Maybe ten. These people don’t have to run around registering dead people as voters and stuffing ballot boxes, either. They have to make some changes to the software the computer inside the box runs. That’s all. A few people making a few changes, and an entire election, potentially across an whole nation, is rigged.

Who would do such thing?

People with something to gain by it. Money, government grants, graft, power, whatever. These things happen all the time. In Canada, the Liberal party managed to squander something like a billion dollars by letting those with something to gain use it. And I don’t even have to talk about Watergate and a hundred other more minor scandals.

This is why I object to electronic voting. Unless something changes in their procurement, design, and use, I won’t ever use one myself. I don’t trust myself enough to handle that kind of power and influence without some kind of oversight, some kind of transparency. Why would I trust some faceless bureaucrat or executive with a power so awesome as the vote?

The question, then, is this: are you willing to put democracy in the hands of a few people, none of whom are elected by you, none of whom are responsible to you, and none of whose names you even know?

I know I’m not.