BBC NEWS | Technology | It’s not the Gates, it’s the bars

To pay so much attention to Bill Gates’ retirement is missing the point. What really matters is not Gates, nor Microsoft, but the unethical system of restrictions that Microsoft, like many other software companies, imposes on its customers.

There are those who disagree with this statement, but having read the whole article, I find it difficult to disagree. Is it not true that many proprietary software companies are following in the footsteps of the RIAA and MPAA, trying to force people to re-buy the same content multiple times so they can play it on multiple devices? You do not have to be a free software fanatic to agree with him. Go read the article and then come back. I’ll wait right here.

I even bought a computer with Vista pre-installed (since resized to make room for an installation of MEPIS Linux 6.5.02 64-bit, and probably to be replaced once I get the Atheros WiFi card working under Linux). Why did I buy it? Because I have work to do and could not sit and wait for someone to ship a computer to my home and then have the family ship it to me in whatever state I would be in by the time it arrived. In other words, while Vista is not at all ready for use in either a home or a business environment, the fact is, if you have work to do, you use whatever is conveniently available to work with. We even have a word for this: we call it pragmatism.

Pragmatists like me use “free,” open source, liberty-respecting software when that is an option, but recognize that there are some situations where it is not an option or not an immediate option. We recognize that there may be times when we do have the option of not using anything, and (in my own case) I am usually willing to make that sacrifice.

Contrast this with “Genuine Advantage” snoopware, which runs in the background, reporting back to Redmond, and without which Windows will not even start. We have no idea what kind of information is being sent back. Does Redmond know that I installed Safari, Opera, and Firefox? That I made Firefox my default browser? That I have Thunderbird and Claws-Mail, my e-mail client? That I replaced the trial of MS Office 2007 with OpenOffice? That I made 7-zip my default for all compressed file types it can handle? Do they know about me adding ClamWin as a backup to the proprietary anti-virus program? They very well could. They very well could know the network topography of the hotel where I am staying right now, as well as the hotel I was in before I came here. And … for the right price, so could anyone else. By using proprietary software, you are supporting someone whose interests are contrary to yours, just as much as any used car dealer’s interests are contrary to yours when you come in to buy a car.

Now, that may be acceptable, but each person should know what they are choosing, and have the choice at the time of purchase. What RMS is “bleating” about is the way that many large proprietary software companies want to deny us that choice. As usual, he’s right.

Many users hate the “Microsoft tax”, the retail contracts that make you pay for Windows on your computer even if you won’t use it.

Indeed. I would gladly have purchased the computer without an operating system and installed what I want from the beginning. It certainly couldn’t have taken any longer than removing all the garbage that HP put on it. Bundling the OS and a ton of crapware is a way to restrict choice and preempt competition. Like RMS, I look forward to the day when there are high quality liberty-respecting alternatives for every software product. And guess what? I do not mind paying or contributing in order to have that.

Source: Jim Robertson.

A blog posting by Bruce Scheier is interesting. Many of us travel on business. Typically, when I travel, I am away for two to four months.

In such a situation, you do what you can to prevent it, but you are always aware that what you pack may end up in some TSA employee's garage. I have generally had the opinion that if you do not buy the newest, shiniest items, thieves will tend to go after someone else's stuff. It is a variation on the practice of not carrying a lot of cash around. (In my case, there is a 20 year-old at home, so there isn't much cash anyway.)

Until fairly recently, I had a Dell laptop with 320MB of RAM that did not even do wireless. Over the past year, that became my stay-home laptop because the hotels have all gone wireless now. I then pulled out a newer computer, purchased about three years ago, which has 512MB of RAM. Just recently, it proved inadequate, so I am now travelling with a modern computer.

It is not just computers where I practice this. My phone is a prepaid, so that I can only lose so much if it gets lost or stolen. What is this American thing of travelling with expensive toys dangling like costume jewelry? If our cities were anywhere near as dangerous as we believe them to be, a lot of clearly visible potential victims would no longer be "potential" victims.

The Rolex, fake or not? Dump it. Get a $30 special from Target. A lot of our problems come from our obsession with owning expensive toys and displaying them in public to enjoy the envious looks from other people. Once you stop trying to impress others with your toys, you can get back to trying to make the world a better place for the next generation, and the next generation better people.

My granddaughter is walking. That is far more important to me than the most expensive toy.

Now that I’m using Twitter, I’m often trying to work on something important while Tweeting and writing blog articles and reading feeds and fielding e-mail and phone calls. It is no surprise, then, that I’m not receptive to calls that waste my time. Neither is it a surprise that my laptop’s 512MB of RAM is nowhere near enough for me any more. But I’m 2,000 miles away from home (since April), and not willing to deal with trying to explain to a telephone order taker that I want the product shipped to a hotel in Ohio instead of my home in California. So I went down to a retail store and picked up an HP something-or-other with 3GB of RAM.

Unfortunately, it came with Vista pre-installed. Fair enough. It has been a year since I last struggled with with it. Perhaps SP1 has fixed some of the most glaring issues.

First impression: All sorts of unwanted stuff is automatically starting, from first-run licensing wizards to “update your software” wizards, to the “welcome center”. Control-Alt-Delete will still let you bring up the task manager, which you can use to kill the wonderful tell-you-about-your-computer video. Now to turn off the welcome center’s run-at-startup function. Huh? Where is it? Oh, there it is, in the control panel. I realize that every application on the system (in addition to the operating system) needs to have someone accept the license. However, having them all pop up at once (modal dialog boxes, the most user-unfriendly thing on the planet) when you turn the computer on is not a good first impression. I do think that some of this is HP’s fault and the fault of the application vendors like Symantec, rather than the fault of the OS vendor. [Note to Microsoft: for more satisfied consumers, stop selling the OS bundled with the hardware. When a user buys the OS on CD and installs from scratch, they won't have to deal with the vendor-supplied crapware that mars the experience of using Windows.]

All right, let’s update the system and get it ready to use. I’ll just connect to the hotel’s WiFi network, the thing that was so problematic last year. This year, it connects quickly, but after a short (but varying) time period, drops the connection. It does not usually re-connect without being explicitly told to do so. It can be really frustrating. Is it better than last year? Undoubtedly. With difficulty, I’m able to get updates, reboot, get antivirus updates.

Next, I have a particular set of applications that I like and use, which is different from the set that came with the computer. So it is time to download the new Firefox 3, Opera 9.5, Thunderbird 2, and Safari. With the up and down networking, that took one whole evening. You’d think after so long that every browser would have implemented Opera’s download restarting feature, but that is apparently not the case. Dowload 7-zip, KiXtart, Python, Rebol, VisualWorks Smalltalk Non-commercial version, NetBeans and Java SDK, Squeak. (Tonight, for a change, the networking seems to be more stable.) Remove MS Works and ‘HP Games by WildTangent’ and several other non-useful applications.

This computer has an “experience index” of 2.6, so there is only a single desktop–pretty limiting when compared with the Linux and Mac OS X desktops–it is hard to deal with. It feels like I’m back in 1998 or something. That in itself defeats the purpose of buying the laptop. I’m going to resize the partition and try dual-booting for a while. For someone that only browses the Web, types a few documents, and uses e-mail, the single-desktop interface is great. For someone who does much else, it stinks.

This isn’t a Vista failing, but something that HP chose: the screen resolution is only 1200×800. I’ve gotten used to higher resolutions with newer computers, so this is a step backwards.

How is Vista SP1, compared with the original Vista?

• UAC: Still there, still annoying. Still defeats the purpose of security by teaching users to mindlessly click “allow”.. No change or improvement.
• Wireless networking: The computer does know its IP address and can browse the Internet. Wireless connections drop after a short time, and must be manually re-connected. Not quite unusable, but close. An improvement, but not nearly enough.
• Peripherals: I plugged in my external keyboard, a couple of different mice, and a graphics tablet. Everything works without fighting system security over drivers. This is a tremendous improvement.

I’m not much of a media consumer, so I couldn’t say whether the emphasis on TUR (technological usage restrictions, also known as DRM) for media has hurt the utility of the system. I could ship it home and let the family media consumer test it out, but he’s got his Mac and would probably not even turn on a Windows machine any more.

Overall, I’d say to skip Vista if you can. It is still not ready for most users. I still recommend Dell’s Ubuntu computers, or you could get a Mac Mini for under $1,000. The user experience is so much better with these products as compared to Vista that you can save yourself hours of aggravation. If you go with Mac, chances are the neighbor’s 13 year-old has one anyway, so he’ll still be able to set things up for you.

Tags: Vista, Ubuntu, Mac

This is one of an occasional series on improving our schools and the OLPC and Sugar projects.

It wasn’t too long ago that I got to see up close the struggles in schools that our current top-down teaching model causes. In our family, fortunately, this process resulted in graduation, but in many others, it doesn’t. Australian teacher Bill Kerr writes about his efforts in trying to reach his students with fractions and about trying to apply educational theory in the real world of the classroom.

What is refreshing about Bill Kerr: redefining power relationships in the classroom is that he is even starting to break out of the top-down, lecture-style teaching pattern. He isn’t doing this as some sort of social protest, but as a limited part of trying to find a place that motivates students to make the effort required to grasp the subject matter.

My quest for meta-dialogue in teaching fractions has merged with the broader issue of redefining power relationships between myself as teacher and my students. This is as it must be in the modern world, where the “cool” thing to say is “school sux” and “maths is boring”. Not only students say this, School (and teachers) have many critics.

Yes, schools have critics, but not enough of them. Every parent should be concerned enough to closely examine the methods and practices of the local school system, so they will encourage, support, and when necessary, challenge and confront the local educrats (the non-elected bureaucrats that choke our school systems, draining of their funds and preventing many teacher-inspired and parent-inspired ideas from being implemented). In my not-so-humble opinion, most of the problems we have in our schools are not teacher problems–from what I have seen, most teachers are hardworking and dedicated–so criticizing teachers is not going to help.

In my state, California, we knew our schools were in trouble in the 1970s, when I was there. Three decades later, they are still in trouble, and top-down prescriptions from federal and state educational agencies are doing little to help. Our schools’ problems are local and they must be solved locally. Our teachers and parents need to have the autonomy to improvise, as Mr. Kerr apparently has in his country. Since the person with the gold makes the rules, we need to make local funding and local control the hallmark of our schools, even if this means breaking up massive districts like the Los Angeles Unified, into smaller, locally-controlled, locally-funded entities.

I should point out that during the accreditation process, one of the things they look for is for the elected board of education to back off and let the professionals have free reign. I would support a bill that requires more parental and community control of our school systems. Either the accreditors would have to deal with it or lose the largest state’s business. (This is similar to the pressure that the University of California placed on the group behind the SAT–adapt or die.)

I agree with Mr. Kerr that computers, if used in a primarily explorative manner, are a tool that can help with learning. A lot of current software is cleverly disguised quizzes (e.g., those “Blaster” games), which only work for a while.

I do think we also have to address “mission creep”. Schools are supposed to ensure a basic level of skill in particular areas. When schools became college training grounds and vocational training centers, that was an acceptable extension of responsibility, but now schools offer day care (for students and for children of students), breakfast and after-school meals, food distribution, clothing distribution, and medical care. As important as all those things are, no single organization or institution can be good at that many things at once. Parents, neighbors, and community organizations have to step up and take over some of these areas, so that the schools can get back to doing their own jobs.

Most importantly, businesses need to face the fact that anyone you hire will need training. Build it into the process and stop trying to beat on the schools to save corporations a little money. If the CEO has to use last year’s yacht again this year, maybe he/she will work harder in the next year.

In view of the news that Microsoft Office 2007’s upcoming service pack will add support for ODF 1.1 to the product, including the ability to make ODF the default format, I think it is now time to again advocate that state, local, and national government agencies move all their data into the vendor-neutral ODF format.

While we do not yet know how well or how poorly MS Office 2K7 will read and write ODF, their previous objection that their product could not compete in an ODF-default environment is flattened. About one year from now, the newest version of MS Office will have an equal chance to compete in such an environment.

Goal one in any file format requirement is to ensure that the entire organization and all of its employees and processes can speak a common language. One thing we don’t want is for department X’s work to have to be re-done by department Y, because the two departments use incompatible data formats. A related goal is for suppliers and customers to also have the ability to exchange documents with the organization’s staff members. With Microsoft’s participation, ODF is the format for organizational data.

Another important consideration, especially in governmental scenarios, is continued long-term access to data stored in any particular file format. There are dozens of formats that were used by some specific word processor or spreadsheet application, now departed. In some cases, that data may be gone with the application that produced it. In others, someone may need to do quite a bit of research to reverse engineer a usable import filter for importing data stored in that format into a more current application. In those situations, we really do not want to use a format that is used only by one vendor, nor one that is protected by patents (someone could get into trouble for enabling you to access your data after the original product is no longer available). A secret format, not publicly specified (or not completely specified) is also a format that may blow up in someone’s face.

For various reasons, this is again a place where ODF stands out.

A third consideration, and an important one, is that data formats need to be vendor neutral and multiply implemented. Office software has improved very little since about 1997, but in that time period, having a single vendor dominate the market has greatly increased the price one must pay to acquire the software. It has also led to allegations of timing “upgrades” to match the need for more cash, as format tweaks require everyone that corresponds with someone using the new format to also upgrade to the new version. Multiply-implemented vendor-neutral formats favor the purchaser and end-user over the vendor. If vendor A’s product downloads photos from the Mars landers, but you don’t need or want that feature, buy vendor B’s product that doesn’t do that. The actual data you produce is interchangeable.

Even better, if vendor A comes out with a rotten upgrade to their operating system, you can use vendor C’s product that has the ability to run on some competing operating systems. Not that I’m picking on a certain vendor that did come out with a rotten upgrade to their market-leading operating system. We’re all ecumenical here.

For more, see this. It is written in support of last year’s AB-1668 in the California Legislature. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get the state to reconsider later this year or early next year.

Tags: ODF, ODF Advocacy

I once said that relational sites are made for people that don’t have real relationships to deal with.

It turns out that I have been out of state for about six weeks, with another three to six weeks to go on this assignment. Other than the occasional baseball game, I’ve been sitting in the hotel room watching the History Channel and the Weather Channel.

This is a fitting time, I guess, to become more active on Twitter. So I have.

For most blog posts, I spend two hours or more composing, editing, and re-editing the article. For a 140-character “tweet”, that is overkill. Plus Twitter doesn’t offer “source editing”. No wrestling with the size of monospace font in the fourth paragraph.

I still place most content, especially important content, on blogs. Much tweeting is throw-away stuff. Once I’m home, working in the garden and hanging out with family and friends, I probably won’t have time for Twitter, Pownce, or similar sites.

I agree with CyberTech Rambler and Ditesh of the OpenMalaysia Blog: there was and is a standards conflict, if not a war. Ditesh gives some examples.

Those who cannot see this [PDF] have their eyes closed. This wasn’t some anti-Microsoft frenzy. It was Microsoft realizing that they hadn’t planned for the market coalescing around a non-Microsoft controlled, vendor-neutral standardized file format, ODF. They then unleashed their attack dogs to try to chew up anyone and anything that supported ODF while they crammed OOXML through Ecma and ISO.

As PJ pointed out, Massachusetts forces it to rethink this strategy, and Microsoft came out fighting. OOXML passage through ECMA and ISO is a war. May be not the big crash of superpowers, but at least a guerilla war fought between a superpower and local, disorganized fractions such as this fly-by blog. Interestingly, most anti OOXML/proODF people do not see Microsoft supports for ODF in Microsoft Office’s next service pack, and its decision to rejoin the ODF committee at OASIS as them winning the war. Do I believe this is a turning point in the war? Not yet. It will depends on what is delivered in the service pack, and Microsoft behavour in the committee. However, it can potentially be a turning point. — CTRambler

I also agree with CTRambler that the result (whether Microsoft support for ODF brings it to a happy end) depends very much on the implementation of ODF that Microsoft uses in Office 2007 SP2.

It is only those in Redmond who feared that ODF would so damage their office suite market share that they’d all be joining MLM plans. The rest of us already know that Microsoft will do quite well in a fair competition, gradually losing share (the way that AT&T did the first few years after telecom deregulation). This would actually help the company, as it would force them to jetison money-losers like Zune and MSN/Live and to change the way the company is managed.

In fact, those of us who deal with end-users want Microsoft to be one of several popular options for office software, because this is best for end-users, even if it is uncomfortable for some vendors. Those who use software benefit from single format-multiple vendor standards (SFMV). We want Microsoft to be a part of our SFMV universe.

Let me repeat it in case anyone might have their eyes closed: We want a strong, profitable Microsoft to be part of a competitive market for office software, because this is best for end-users, assuming SFMV. The second we throw in multiple vendor-specific formats (MVSF), of which OOXML is an example, it becomes possible for a single vendor or a small number of vendors to abuse end-users over and over with impunity. (Remember, OOXML is a proprietary format in drag.) To claim that opposing OOXML’s attempt to monopolize the market and revealing its crucial design flaws is being “anti-Microsoft” requires either self-deception or dishonesty.

So, I am looking at Microsoft’s announcement with cautious hope. I am hoping that they are really going to integrate ODF into their product, and not make it a half-baked “me-too” addition. I am hoping that they will participate in the OASIS TC without any intention of sinking or polluting the format, but of making it better. Better for their needs (including accurately representing content imported from previous editions of their software), better for the needs of StarOffice/OpenOffice.org, better for the needs of KOffice, better for the needs of AbiWord/Gnumeric, better for both commercial entities that wish to utilize the format AND for free software projects using GPL and other FSF/OSI approved licenses. And I hope that the results are so good (including the financial results) for Microsoft that they never need to continue with OOXML, and instead quietly make ODF the main default format for their office products.

If / when that happens, I’ll be dancing …

Topic Of Discussion: ODF and OOXML

The OpenDocument.XML.org community site has a lot of links to coverage of issues surrounding document formats.

For example, one article links to an article on Ars Technica about the Sun ODF Plugin for MS Office.

… Microsoft paid no notice; the update was going to allow seamless opening, editing, and saving Word, Excel, or PowerPoint documents using ODF, whether people liked it or not. Microsoft told those interested in the move that they had to wait until the first half of 2009, and now Sun is telling them that next year has come early.

By the way, I recommend Sun's plug-in for those who cannot switch to another office suite that natively uses ODF. See lists here and here to find other ODF-capable software.

Another entry links to a story about the Dutch government producing an open source conversion tool to transform its documents from proprietary formats to ODF.

The Fall of Microsoft Office points to a Motley Fool article of the same name.

On the same day that the state of New York published a report supporting open formats for electronic documents, mighty Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) said that it would support the open-source ODF format in Office 2007. Redmond’s own Open Office XML specification may be heading for the great Recycle Bin in the sky, never to come back.

…

The company’s biggest revenue generator may be a shadow of its former self in a few years. I just hope that Microsoft has some alternative business prospects on tap — and no, tackling Google’s search hulk head-on doesn’t count.

I note that I did say that a single format, with multiple compatible applications was threatening to Microsoft's financials, which explained all they did to attempt to promote multiple formats, with a single compatible application for each. This despite the oft-spoken desire of end-users to have single format, multiple compatible applications, so they no longer have to worry about what software brand and version is being used by their friends and business associates.

"OOXML ratification faces delay after objection" points to a C|Net article of the same name. Microsoft&339;s ODF support points to Open XML challenges links to a same-named article at Computerworld.

Microsoft Corp.’s plan to add ODF support to its Office applications suite next year reflects continued challenges for the software vendor’s own Office Open XML file format, as the industry moves ahead with adopting ODF and sorts out Open XML’s troubles.

Though Open XML was ratified as an open standard by the ISO international standards body on April 1, it continues to face impediments to widespread adoption. On Friday, it was revealed that South Africa is appealing ISO’s approval of the standard. And earlier this week, New York’s state government officially promoted ODF — formally, the Open Document Format for Office Applications — as a standard file format based on customer demand, as it launched a new initiative for technology openness and open standards.

I am not sure that the general public is as attentive to the debate as they have been, but the technology community appears to be re-energizing its attention.

In Romania, Microsoft signed on as a co-sponsor of an education event. Some of the participants wanted to demo some free software educational software and hand out Ubuntu Linux CDs. They could not, however, because Microsoft claimed it was “unfair competition”.

See the story.

I asked the organizers if our Free Software Group could hold a short
session about the benefits of FOSS in education, with references to
Ubuntu, Edubuntu and Kiwilinux and we were given a slot after the ones
which had already been planned a while ago - those of Microsoft, Cisco
and a local company that sells education software for Romanian schools.

My question is:

Are they really so afraid of competition that they have to resort to this sort of thing? Is it likely that demonstrating Edubuntu and passing out LiveCDs is going to significantly affect the vendors’ sales to event participants? I would say the answer is assuredly ‘no’, but apparently it isn’t so clear.

Seeing how much the company detests fair competition, it makes me wonder just how faithfully they intend to implement ODF in their office suite. Are they afraid for customers to have a choice? Will they bully their “partners” to prevent them from fully supporting ODF?

In other words, it looks like we have the “same bat channel, same bat time”.

Yesterday, the International League’s Buffalo Bisons visited the Columbus Clippers. The score was Bisons: 1, Clippers: 4. As part of my normal practice of going to see baseball games wherever I am and whenever I can, I went to watch the game.

According to the program, the stadium dates back to the 1930s, and the site has been a baseball park for 96 years. This is its final season.

The Game

The Clippers scored two runs on a pair of singles in the third. The Bisons scored a run in the fifth. Twice, the Bisons had the tying run on base (once with the go-ahead run on base), but the Clippers were able to get out of them. Most spectacularly when Shin-Soo Choo grounded out to first. The Bison pitcher seemed to have unhittable “stuff” for a few innings, but that all changed in the bottom of the 8th, when the Clippers scored two more runs to put the game out of reach.

As I have often said, all other sports are merely off-season practice for baseball. This game confirms that impression. If you find yourself in Central Ohio, check out the Clippers.