Blogging Ottinger (tim)

Christianity Today has a nice (short) article on my church. The tease:

Oord has been working to redefine holiness and to persuade the church to drop the word entire in its Article of Faith on sanctification. He said the Wesleyan tradition has more to do with social justice than social conservatism. In particular, Oord focuses on Jesus’ “love command” in Luke 10:27: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as yourself.”

According to DbD, it looks like selling music without DRM works. We knew that when eMusic got so big. They move a lot of independent and long-tail stuff, all non-DRMed.

It bothers me when I see a review of an mp3 player (or worse, an ad) that lists DRM as a feature. I know that the innocent might see DRM and think it means “compatible with iTunes (and the like)” but of course that’s not necessarily so. One DRM isn’t necessarily compatible with another, and of course DRM adds cost to the development of players.

It’s encouraging when people get mad about DRM because it is a bad system for the consumer. Hopefully the vendors will learn that DRM is just a bad idea.

But now it looks like we have further evidence that not having DRM is a good idea, and that’s a move in the right direction. I hope the market chooses wisely.

I’m glad to see more people saying this:

Comparing Windows server (very expensive) with Linux (almost if not completely free) on the basis of revenue from licenses - might just be slightly flawed.

Yeah. So should we compare the penetration of cars v. bikes by revenue? Oh, look, the revenue for all limos and SUVs for any given period was far greater than the revenue for bicycles in the same period. I guess nobody is buying bikes.

Sadly, though, we don’t know how to measure Linux. There are a lot of people using Ubuntu and Debian and Fedora and Gentoo and various BSD Unixes which are freely-downloaded, freely-copied, and freely-used. You don’t know if a copy downloaded means one new Linux machine, a re-image of an already-Linux machine, a dozen new Linux machines, or nothing at all. You can’t count copies moved through retail channels, because a lot of Linux doesn’t move through those channels. You can’t count linux pre-installs, because almost nobody gets their machine preinstalled. Almost all the machines come with windows, including those that I immediately reformat and set up with Linux.

It’s a tough game, and no remotely reliable measure exists. I don’t blame retailers for reporting with the numbers they already have, but I think that everyone should know that the numbers don’t mean anything at all.

I keep coming across the same problem. If I install an application “correctly” (ie. libraries under /usr/lib, include files under /usr/include, docs at /usr/share/doc, all according to thefilesystem hierarchy standard) then things start to fail. There is some assumption floating in a lot of projects that the software was all crammed into one directory (either under ~ or /opt/) and not into the FHS correct paths.

This keeps biting me. It was a big problem when I was trying to work with colleagues on some java work that included tomcat. Tomcat installed correctly, but this put the project expected it to be all under one directory so that the path was TOMCAT_ROOT/include, TOMCAT_ROOT/lib, etc. Right now it’s ACE wrappers for me. The project I have expects an ACE_ROOT where the /lib, /include, and the like are all co-resident. Of course, it’s not installed that way at all. When I did make install it put it in the correct places according to the FHS.

I guess that’s the way of projects. People tend to set up one way, and assume that the one way is *the* way, even though they disagree with the published FHS (whose job is to define the “one way”). If you are runing Tomcat as a server, it won’t deal with that. It expects a special localized build of tomcat running locally. If you install ACE (according to the ACE make file) then it won’t go, you have to have a local build just for the one project.

The thing that bothers me is that feel deeply that the way Linux, ACE, and I are doing this is right, and that the projects I work with are wrong, but find myself swimming against the current much of the time. If I had unlimited disk space, then I wouldn’t care. I’d have redundant installs for each project. Sadly, I have a laptop with only 80GB and can’t afford multiple copies. Bummer.

I found a misheard lyrics thing and it made me laugh out loud. I don’t laugh enough, but it sure felt good.

Potato Wave!

Just blowin’ off some steam here.

For what it’s worth, I’m still waiting to have my very first positive experience with Java. I frankly don’t know why anyone bothers with this language. It’s as bad as C++ in everything but core dumps, and it is worse when it comes to tool setup. Admittedly, I am trying (with help) to wrangle Java, Eclipse, Svn, a project set up in SVN poorly,and fitnesse into a set of interoperating projects and I don’t even know the language yet. I’m working with nothing but and a big headful of ignorance and the kindness of others (and the occasional grouchy email exchange or IM). If you start to learn Java, start with an empty directory and a good idea. Don’t start like this or you will probably feel like I feel right now.

I bet if I just moved from C++ to Java, and I’d been working with a big team of people who had sloppy pointer handling and crummy memory management, and who abused overloading and inheritance, then I would probably see Java as a welcome relief. I did C++, but after that I did Python for a living, and then C#. That makes Java a lot less inviting since everything I do in Java is easier in at least two other languages.

Mind you, the C++ code I’ve been seeing lately has ugly dark corners, but at least you can work on it in a text editor and makefile. Java world brings a lot of associated technologies, history, and tool baggage to the table. And mind you, all of the things that made Java famous are things that the industry seems to agree are bad ideas, such as struts and EJBs and Spring and Applets. I’m not sure what it’s good for, but it sure had all the buzz for a little while. It sold a *lot* of books

The good news is that I’ve tried many things in my configuration-by-permutation-and-random-chance experience, and some nice people have been helpful in showing me bits and pieces. I even recall the bits I understand. I know more *about* setting up Eclipse projects from Subversion repositories using Subclipse, and more about classpaths and fitnesse than I never knew before. That is some progress.

Sadly, it is not enough yet. If I have to start over again, I’m going to have to get help again. Getting started with this stuff is ugly and sloppy. Maybe I can finally like Java (at least a little) when I can actually program in it again. I didn’t like it last time, but I didn’t do much programming before I found out that I was working in the “wrong” code base and needed to start over. I didn’t understand my setup last time, and so I had to screw it up at least four or five different ways before getting help again, and the guy helping me had troubles rather like I’ve been having. It’s just a mess.

On the other hand, I saw a Smalltalk demo today, and that looked fun. I know from experience that python is tons of fun. Ruby looks like a lot of fun. I worked with some people doing TDD in Perl and that was fun too. I wish the commercial world would go ahead and make the jump to decent dynamic languages (I’m not yet sure whether “decent”includes Perl) so we don’t have to wrestle with bureaucratic, statically-typed, punctuation-oriented, straight-jacketed languages any more. At least I can keep wishing while I try to rubber-cement this Java tool setup to the inside of my head.

Okay. Better now. Thanks for the shoulder.

When make works, it’s great. When it fails, it’s awful.

A nice trick is to create a new target, right up at the top of the file where it becomes the new default target, give it no dependencies (unless you want to test the dependent build, I guess) and have it echo variables to stdout. This is how I found out that I had an extra space appended to one of my path variables, which was really screwing up make.

     madness:
        echo \"VAR1 is \" $(VAR1)
        echo \"VAR2 is \" $(VAR2)

This was enough to solve my problem. Hope it’s useful for yours, whatever it may be.

Even though we share the same name, and are both middle aged, this guy is not me. Nor am I a real estate agent, nor am I a track star. Those are other Tim Ottingers I’ve never met. I feel much better now.

When I saw the ad with this image in it, I was wondering why Microsoft was recommending not using NCSoft. It took me a while to realize that they weren’t trying to say that, but to me (a long time linux user) it looked like a dis-recommendation.

In retrospect, I see now that they were dis-recommending both their OS and NCSoft.

I bought a book a few years ago called “The Big Book of How To Study” because I realize I don’t soak up and recall material as well as I used to. I figured it would help. The book sat around unread for a little while, but finally about a year ago I picked it up and read a few chapters (not in a row) about how to read material that you have to remember later.

I’ve carried it around with me on work gigs, but haven’t cracked it open. I don’t remember what it recommended. Hmmm. I suppose that doesn’t mean anything good.

Upgrading from Ubuntu Edgy Eft to FeistyFawn was not so easy as I thought. I hit a few snags.

• My drives went from /dev/hda* to /dev/sda* and my mount table was not set for UUIDs. If you don’t know what that means, it means that my home and data didn’t mount and I had to go make changes to the /etc/fstab to get them back. I had to go to console #1 to find out why my machine was stalling, but I got it all figured out and fixed.
• Resume wanted to start working, but couldn’t. The old ubuntu would corrupt my hibernate space, but the new one wanted to resume because it somehow knew that I’d hibernated before. It was an annoyance, but I found it. Again, I dropped to console 1 and saw it was asking me for something I didn’t have. After I pressed enter, it continued okay, but I had to mess with making a swap area where the older version had corrupted mine, and I put it back into service.
• I don’t remember what icon theme I was using, but it is no longer supported. I had document icons for all my directories, external drives, trash, etc. I changed icon theme and now I’m just fine, thank you. I can’t even blame XFCE for that one. I think having weird preferences may sometimes lead to weird problems. Not Ubuntu’s fault either. Just something I didn’t expect.
• In Thunar file manager, apparently double-clicking a ‘makefile’ in a directory is some kind of special gesture that means “please delete all files in this directory, recursing to delete all subdirectories”. That one hit me twice, and my not be Ubuntu’s problem but XFCE4.4’s problem.

I also had to abandon XFCE4.4’s compositor, because the T42p has a wimpy graphics card. My next laptop will need a graphics card at least hot enough for that, and preferably hot enough for beryl. I wanted that compositor, too. I’m sad.

But otherwise, I’m running Feisty. I would have hated for this upgrade to mess up a friends computer, especially a friend who’s not very Linux-savvy. It was okay for me, though it provided some anxious moments.

Still, my machine is working pretty well. I guess I’ll try out the hibernate and see what’s up with that. Maybe it will work again. That would be cool.

I found this link on Reddit, and thought it was cool. I know that I won’t remember it if and when I ever do windows again, so I am placing it here. Besides, my friends may need to know how to unhide software in windows. Some of them are still flying that pastel flag. Oddly enough, most are not (and that’s cool).

A friend sent me this bit in email. Yes, I’m outraged. I think that this whole hate speech bill is going to be a big problem. I’m okay with being sensitive to the situations of others, but I think that we’re going far too far now.

The words “natural family,” “marriage” and “union of a man and a woman” can
be punished as “hate speech” in government workplaces, according to a
lawsuit that is being appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, according to the
Washington Times. Don Surber says “I have to wonder why I am supporting gay
marriage when one group of gays and one federal circuit court contend that
³marriage² is a profanity that should not be uttered at work.”

http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20070610-111445-6957r.htm

http://blogs.dailymail.com/donsurber/2007/06/11/marriage-is-hate-speech/

I think that “contrary” or “insensitive” is different from “hate speech”. In this case, it seems like normal speech about ones personal situation is considered hate speech if other people choose to live differently? To me, I think that speech that encourages mistreatment or violence is hate speech, and I wish that were the standard.

People can not like me because I’m a white person, because I’m a male, because I’m a consultant, because I’m a computer geek, because I’m of European descent (Swiss/German/Austrian/Native American), because I come from Indiana, because I’m bald on top, or because I’m a Christian. They can even express that they don’t like those things in me. As long as they don’t encourage my mistreatment or violence against me and my family, I don’t think it’s hate speech.

I worry about the erosion of free speech, and I worry about the slippery slope here. When will disagreement with the government be considered hate speech? What if my proclamation of my personal history, above, becomes hate speech? What if your holy scriptures are considered hate speech? I don’t want to see people be rude, but I don’t want to see someone in lock-up because they mentioned that they love their wife and kids, either.

Well, now it’s the RIAA’s turn to have to defend against lawsuits from music lovers, rather than the other way ’round. Meanwhile, download stores like iTunes and eMusic are making a killing, many online indie download companies are doing just fine and the public is listening to more music than ever. Go figure.

If the RIAA guys can get hooked into this whole “long tail” thing, and support digital music better, this whole thing can blow over and we can all happily give them our money again. Well, also if they start making a variety of interesting music. There still isn’t much of interest being released this decade as far as I know.

I lost an insane amount of time this week to Eclipse and Java and FitNesse. The latest snafu turned out to be all because of one little fact that was not obvious to me and which every Linux programmer should know:

Java paths don’t know jack about ~ (home dir).

Do not expect to set any paths in any java program relative to your home that way. At least in my setup, Java doesn’t know what tilde means, and doesn’t know why it can’t find anything when there’s a tilde in the path. It’s an embarrassing thing to be stuck on, but if you don’t know and the error messages aren’t really useful, you’re down to debugging by permutation.

Arbitrarily changing things to see if it “fixes” a configuration problem is an open-ended operation. It can take ten seconds or three days, and when you “fix” it you might not know why it works or whether it is really fixed. This is not engineering, it’s slapdash amateurism (in the most pejorative sense) but sometimes one has to stoop to that when one has more troubles than knowledge, support, and access to help.

Okay. Enough of that. I feel dirty. I wish I’d read that somewhere instead of having to wade through it.

My son has an iPod, and I needed to load it up for him. I tried a lot of different apps, including gtkpod, but the one that worked best for me was Amarok. I use amarok for my music collection, and love the way it handles playlists and how it randomizes. It’s a nice app. I just didn’t realize it was a very nice interface to the ipod also. It was very nice, very simple, and it actually worked (which is a good change from some of the others).

No screenshots today, but I do recommend amarok.

I updated my laptop from edgy to fiesty. There is not a lot of difference, which is a good thing. I have only spent two days with it, and have noticed a few things worth a mention:

• It has a “restricted drivers manager” that works. However, the ATI driver for my thinkpad (T42p) is not very good and flickers. I’m back to the stable, solid open-source driver for now.
• Overall the XFC34 stuff works great, but Thunar icons are not all that they should be. I don’t see folders for my directores, but documents. I had gotten used to better visual iconography. Not sure why this isn’t working.

Otherwise everything is ducky. Or “fawny” I suppose.

Another fellow decided that Ubuntu makes windows look pretty bad, and I have to agree. This is is not the linux you had in the 1900s, and the experience is much improved from only a few years ago. Ubuntu, Debian. LSF, the Kernel team, etc are doing a wonderful job of making Linux a very stable and very attractive operating system for everyone. Or at least everyone who is interested in switching operating systems.

On a sad note, I think my DVD/CD drive is dying. It no longer plays movies and has trouble with some CDs. I guess I should look at replacing both my DVD drive and upgrading my hard drive to something larger than a measley 80GB.