Why I Don't Use "Linux"
Buzzing by Buzzing Bye, I found this post that was denouncing Richard Stallman's position that “Linux” should be known as “GNU/Linux.” This hit a nerve, perhaps because I've seen so many likeminded posts, and it inspired me to write an editorial at OfB.biz that argues for the name GNU/Linux and also takes a side journey into why the GNU GPL is better in some ways than the BSD license.
Whether this sounds like gobble-de-gook or you already understand this issue, you might enjoy the opinion piece, which you can find here.
Why GNOME's Got it Right
Ed wrote earlier this week about a project known as GoneME that seems to be quite upset with GNOME's moves to create the simplest user interface possible for GNU/Linux and other UNIX-like systems. While I commented a bit in his blog entry on the matter, I decided it was high time for me to exposit on the issue (I had been planning to for some time now). Thus, I have posted an article entitled Why GNOME's Got it Right on OfB. Take a look and give your two cents here.
Why George Bush Should Win
He refuses to realize that it was the law of the land since 1996, as signed into effect by President Clinton, that Saddam Hussein was to be ousted. He refuses to recall his 1997 Crossfire position that unilateral removal of of the Baathist regime was acceptable if the world wouldn't join the cause. He refuses to admit he has had nine distinct opinions on the war in Iraq since announcing his run in the presidential race. He feels he can say it was the “wrong war, at the wrong time, in the wrong place,” but at the same time there have been numerous points since the fall of Baghdad that he has supported the war, just like many of the other top Democrats that now oppose it.
He talks about bringing in allies while he attempts to ruin John Howard. He trivializes the contributions of Poland, Australia, Britain and 27 other nations as the coalition of the coerced and the bribed. Not perhaps completely out of character for one who once spent his time testifying to the Congress that Vietnam vets were “war criminals.” Kerry loves to glory in things as he attacks and demeans them (he sure loved playing up his part in “war crimes” at the Democratic Convention).
The French and the Germans have said even a shift to Kerry will not get them to enter the fray in Iraq. Look, they don't want to get involved, that's their prerogative and it is not likely they will flip-flop just because a guy who says he opposed the war while he supported it gets elected. What about other allies? As President Bush noted, “So what's the message going to be: 'Please join us in Iraq. We're a grand diversion. Join us for a war that is the wrong war at the wrong place at the wrong time?'”
Without veering too far off my point, consider this: do we want a president who advocates potentially disastrous treaties like Kyoto and the International Criminal Court merely to increase the respect of the world? Kerry's argument for Kyoto was not its merits but how it made us look in the world community — what is this nation sized peer pressure? Or is it better to have a president like President Bush who can strongly disagree with leaders such as President Putin of Russia while maintaining a good rapport with him (the warm relationship between the two presidents is no secret)? President Bush wisely pointed out this last night — a president should get along with the world without compromising to the world.
But back to my main points. In this debate, as John Kerry fired off baseless attacks on the very policies he advocated, I became even more convinced that John Kerry is the wrong leader at the wrong time and the wrong place. President Bush may not be right on everything, he might not be able to beat Kerry on an IQ test either… but his sincerity is clear and he isn't a dummy that should be misunderestimated either. Every bit of sincerity and truthfulness that was apparent in him last night was doubly apparent when I saw him in person in July. President Bush is the “real deal.”
If John Kerry came out and said, “I made a mistake on the intelligence, the president made a mistake, now lets move on. I have a plan and this is what it is…,” I could respect him. Instead, he is doing quite the opposite — he places all the blame, including that entitled to him, on the president. Someone who lies and misleads (even, I would note, on the claim he made that he had never called the President a liar using that word) to try to present an anti-war facade over his support of the war, even before Bush was president, is hardly praise worthy.
That is why George Bush should win.
Why Does My Computer Crash?
If a packet hits a pocket on a socket on a port,
and the bus is interrupted as a very last resort,
and the access of the memory makes your floppy disk abort,
then the socket packet pocket has an error to report.If your cursor finds a menu item followed by a dash
and the double clicking icon puts your window in the trash
and your data is corrupted 'cause the index doesn't hash,
then your situation's hopeless and your system's gonna crash!If the label on the cable on the table at your house
When the copy of your floppy's getting sloppy in the disk
says the network is connected to the button on your mouse,
but your packets want to tunnel to another protocol,
that's repeatedly rejected by the printer down the hall,
and your screen is all distorted by the side effects of gauss,
so your icons in the window are as wavy as a souse;
then you may as well reboot and go out with a bang,
cuz sure as I'm a poet, the sucker's gonna hang!
and the micro code instructions cause unnecessary risk,
then you'll have to flash the memory
and you'll want to RAM your ROM.
Quickly turn off the computer
and be sure to tell your Mom!
Thanks for finding this go to Ed Hurst. Poem inspired by Dr. Seuss, written by Gene Zeiglar.
Why Can't I Use My Phone Number on Messages.app?
Zach Phillips explains my most significant frustration with iMessage on the iPad and Mac:
It would only take one feature to make Messages on iPad and Messages.app useful. Allow me to use my phone number as my iMessages account. My phone number has always been my unique identifier through which I choose to receive these short bits of text (for good reason). If I can't use my real “address,” there's not much point in signing up for a different delivery company. The package will not arrive where I need it.
Since iOS 5 launched, it has puzzled me why Apple designed the system so that iMessages sent to my Apple ID go to my Mac, iPhone and iPad while iMessages sent using my phone number only go to my iPhone. It creates a confusing (and technologically needless) situation where one ideally needs to give up iMessages' brilliant capability of seemlessly replacing SMS to reap all the benefits of using it.
Apple should fix this in iOS 6.
Why Anyone Who Loves Freedom Needs to Support Apple
I tweeted this article about the severe implications of the government's request for a backdoor in Apple's products and included the comment “Imagine the 1st missionary killed in a hostile land, found via an FBI mandated backdoor. This is why Apple is right.” A friend of mine asked me on Facebook why it is so crucial Apple not be forced to create a system that would allow the unlocking of the San Bernardino terror suspect's phone. I want to answer my friend's question by exploring two different parts of the problem.
To understand where this all starts, it starts with Apple creating an encryption system that they did not have the key to unlock. After the revelations about the NSA that Edward Snowden released, Apple created such a system for a very simple reason: it became clear that the government intended to vastly exceed its constitutional surveillance powers and the only way a company like Apple could avoid becoming a collaborator was to remove itself from the key equation so that it genuinely could not access customer data. If a company has the key, the government can demand the key not only to see what a terrorist has on his or her phone, but also for other, less desirable searches like the warrantless, broad data collection the NSA has been doing over the last decade. Worse, when the government utilizes these unconstitutional powers, it imposes gag orders on the companies it interacts with so they cannot even say anything about what is happening.
It bears repeating: while there is broad support for breaking into a terrorist's phone, the only way Apple can legally avoid being made a tool for the government against all of us, not just terrorists, is to create a product that does not have a backdoor. So, Apple did the logical thing: it created a product without any backdoors. Apple is now being asked not just to “unlock” its phone, but to create a new version of its software that has an intentionally broken security system. If it exists, even if it were installed on only this one phone, we will be only a few secret FISA orders away from it being installed on thousands or millions of phones. If an iOS variant that creates a vulnerability exists, the NSA can just contact Apple six months from now and order that same backdoor be included in every iOS device the next time a software update goes out. And, it could gag Apple so that the company could not warn anyone.
Why Aaron's Law is Needed
The tragic case of Aaron Schwartz keeps getting more tragic and infuriating:
Middlesex County's district attorney had planned no jail time, “with Swartz duly admonished and then returned to civil society to continue his pioneering electronic work in a less legally questionable manner,” the report said. “Tragedy intervened when Ortiz's office took over the case to send 'a message.'”
Ortiz's clearly self-promoting motives come into clearer focus as the article goes on to describe another one of her current cases:
Ortiz, 57, also came under fire this week for her attempt to seize a family-owned motel in Tewksbury, Mass., for allegedly facilitating drug crimes, despite ample evidence that the owners worked closely with local police. In a stinging rebuke, U.S. Magistrate Judge Judith Dein tossed out the case yesterday, siding with the motel owners — represented by the public-interest law firm Institute for Justice — and noting that prosecutors had alleged a mere “15 specific drug-related incidents” over a 14-year period during which “the Motel Caswell rented out approximately 196,000 rooms.”
We need to reform our technology laws and ensure that they protect innovation, but with an eye to protecting people first. It might not be the sort of thing that gets people motivated to go to the polls, but we desperately need copyright and patent reform to end situations like the one that apparently convinced Schwartz he had no better alternative than to kill himself.
Whoops!
For the simple reason that I want to keep my mailbox from just filling up my server's hard disk as it pleases, I have a quota of 200 megabytes on it (I keep a copy of messages on the server so that I can use IMAP to access my box from different locations). Unfortunately, I forgot to pay attention to the fact that I was approaching 200 megs of messages until this morning when my mail box traffic seemed a bit slow and my message rules weren't moving things into the right folder. Stupid me!
At any rate, if anyone tried to send me an e-mail message recently, would you please resend them?
Whoops!
I realized I forgot to wish y'all a happy St. Patrick's day yesterday. I hope all of you had a good one and remembered to wear green so that you wouldn't get pinched.
Myself, I enjoyed a lunch that included cabbage and potatoes, so I could not have been much happier. (Plus Thursday was a great day in general, but that's beside the point.)
Whoops!
Mark pointed out to me that I had disabled comments on new posts — not something I intended to do. If you tried to comment in the last day or so and found yourself unable to, please try again.
I'm sorry about that! I should be more thorough in checking my code. Sheesh.
