NE pet peeve of mine has a lot to do with stereotypes. To give an example, consider an old FUD phrase which says that open source programs are not user friendly. Well, open source is a development method (Free software has more to do with the licences and distribution as well). Buy why on earth does a development method affect user interfaces? It does not. Just because you close your code and take it away from users (who can otherwise bring valuable feedback in the form of patches) won’t necessarily (and magically) fix a broken GUI.

There is no correlation between level of openness and user experience. It is a myth.

The type of FUD mentioned above is just one among many. FUD changes perception. it scares people. Here is a message sent to me by a friend (Harvey) about the fear of leaving Microsoft Windows.

Have you ever written an article about the fear of change?

I think people like myself who have finally become adept at using the Microsoft OS, hesitate to switch. It’s analogous to birthing your second baby, especially if delivering the first was a painful experience.

Apprehension and fear are normal mind blockers. However, I would guess that the younger generation with years of computer expertise is more daring, and therefore more willing to experiment and acquiring something new and better than what they now use. That’s probably why I-pods, Blackberries, games and other devices are still selling like hot cakes.

You might want to expand, correct and add to this gibberish, and to make an article out of it.

Well, many articles have been written about the barriers to GNU/Linux adoption on the desktop. They address the issue of fear as well. It is always important to ask oneself, “am I being told the truth, or is someone trying to manipulate me using scare tactics?” In many cases, it’s the latter. Vested interest is to blame.

The State of Massachusetts is nowadays deciding on the issue of open standards and whether to accept or reject a vendor-specific format, namely OOXML. A new article discusses how a decision about choice of format can affect the ability of a business to free itself from the shackles of one single application and platform. From the article: “An impulsive and immediate migration to Linux can sometimes lead to disappointment. Ambitious businesses are sometimes led to believe that their data can merely be be dumped from one platform onto another, but the reality is a little more complex than this.”

uestion: You say that “you can bet your business on Free Software”; how do you back up that statement?

Answer: How can you bet your business on proprietary software? If a company is bought, goes bankrupt or merges or decides to delete a product line you have no choice but to go with whatever product or path they desire. How can you plan when the company keeps changing its licensing terms, and you have no real alternatives? What do you do when the company that makes your software puts its own profits and its values ahead of yours, the customer? When the software company holds back on releasing the latest bug fix so it fits its “release schedule?” When you can’t get that one little feature added that would allow you to streamline your business, save a lot of money and beat your competition to market?

What happens if that company (no matter where it is) is embargoed?

                       — Jon “Maddog” Hall

My desktop still serves me well

Technocrat, which is the Web site where Bruce Perens initially (and correctly) predicted Microsoft’s yet-to-come ‘FUD campaign’, is reporting, through Bruce himself, that the “strong feeling on this issue seems to be very widespread”. Over 2000 people have signed his Open Letter. Meanwhile, ComputerWorld has just published an article titled “Microsoft and Novell pull a SCO”. Below lies a snippet.

The shape of this agreement suggests that Microsoft and Novell have learned from the best, the corporate strategic masterminds at The SCO Group. The scheme there, which you may recall Microsoft championed early and loudly, was to declare that Linux incorporated source code protected by SCO Group copyrights. This declaration gave SCO the power to send out threatening letters to software vendors and customers. The letters said, in essence, that the lucky recipient could pay SCO a license fee now, or risk having its name added to the big list of defendants in its case and pay far more.

As mentioned previously, this type of comparison is intended to stir up strong feelings and reactions. This may be an overstatement that instills fear, if not a case of ‘trolling’ for traffic, so you are advised take it with a grain of salt.

David Berlind of ZDNet argues that, while Novell denies responsibility for or admission of patent infringements, a door remains open on the trademarks front. This is a long write-up which concludes that Steve Ballmer could go for legal pickles rather than major baseless allegations over IP.

That could be in the case. Especially since Novell, in its watershed deal with Microsoft, has taken great care to reiterate that it still believes that it has not infringed on any Microsoft patents. Why then would Novell pay such a huge sum of money (with a promise of longer-term royalities) if it really believed this? Answer? Microsoft may have presented Novell with compelling evidence that Linux (or something that Novell was distributing) infringes on its copyright. Or maybe a trademark (or a servicemark).

The following story has caught my eye.

“For reasons such as this, Maeda is now a “repentant” technowhiz and a leading apostle of simplicity. In 2004 he founded the MIT Simplicity Consortium at the Media Lab, which works with major corporations to design technologies for simplicity-driven products.”

Alexa ranks can be fun. But can they ever be trusted?

What does a high Alexa rating mean to a web master? It shouldn’t mean that much as it’s not accurate. Alexa is a website that tracks a website’s traffic history, and gives a ranking based upon the number of visitors. However the fact that it requires a tool bar to work flaws it in many ways.

[…]

Apparently the folks at Alexa have never heard of any other browser besides Internet Explorer and FireFox. This seems quite unprofessional coming from a company owned by Amazon.com.

My main site peaked at ~17,000^th for Alexa (with Netscraft rank currently at 18,608^th for schestowitz.com). In the latter case, however, the figures are grossly biased because I have the toolbar installed. Ranks very much depend on the audience the site attracts. System administrators , for example, fancy the Netscraft toolbar. Its primary service addresses a niche.

Alexa traffic ranks prove to be a real problem (as well as a perpetual pain) to Webmasters. This remains the only number which can conveniently be assigned to a Web site. It is a silly label that should be disregarded, but the average user does not know this. Luckily, not every average user will have such ranks displayed. Alexa as a comparator is a misleading assessor. Even top sites cannot be compared, unless one judges by orders of magnitude (and takes these with a grain of salt). In fact, PageRank and the likes of it weigh more factors other than traffic, so they ought to surpass Alexa in terms of validity.

As a timely rant, I was temporarily able to influence Alexa rank with a local installation of the A9 toolbar, but then Microsoft took over A9’s operations and forced them to shut down some competing services, the toolbar included. Yet another example of acquisitions or mergers that are practically death knells (and a penalty to Mac/Linux/BSD users in this case). That is just why I took it personally.

SearchStatus in action

Related item: Firefox Toolbars