Quick status report

have not blogged here in a while because I keep awfully busy elsewhere (primarily Boycott Novell) and also because I have spent the past few weeks maintaining and upgrading this Web site’s different pieces of software. I shall return to posting more regularly pretty soon. Thanks for the patient subscribers, some of whom I haven’t heard from in a while.

I rarely bother to share personal stories here, but I’ll quickly make one exception. As you may know by now, I finished my practical work (comprising mainly experiments) on the PhD when I was 23/24. but I then slowed it down a bit… well, thereby neglecting my goal of obtaining a PhD at the age of 24. It would have been nice, but priorities changed.

On Friday I had my viva and I passed conditionally (just need to fix one chapter, and for that I have plenty of time). All in all, it’s all good news and all! Yes, it’s a messy sentence by design.

The following article of mine made Slashdot.

A great deal of attention is paid to numbers, but rarely does one actually ask what these numbers mean. One problem that many people have been trying to tackle is gauging the extent of use of Free software, including Linux. Questionnaires are not a solution here and neither are statistics, which are usually derived from the wrong data. The following article looks at the various challenges at hand and concludes that the growth rate of Linux is likely to remain an enigma.

have finally put behind me some chores that I have been escaping and postponing for almost a year. First of foremost, I needed to spend many hours converting documents and papers of mine to HTML, then filing them sensibly under the Web site (here is the largest one among about 10). It was like opening a Pandora’s box, taking a glance at old papers and trying to figure out what fits where. The mind slips when it is no longer familiar with old material that got mis-filed.

Photo from

The second thing which I finally finished is the rowing competition. I did fairly well at it, given the circumstances, but it had my throat in a bad state for almost a day. I will soon report about. I can’t do so now because it is too early to announce the results. If I win, there will be an excellent prize and it will count as a personal achievement which is becoming hard to replicate as not only do I age, but I also seem to spend less time at the gym nowadays. I am not entirely certain what impact my career will have on my physique, but I am not worried (yet!). I’m probably in a better shape than I have ever been, but it varies depending on exercise. Some things I have neglected while others, which do not count as ‘dirty laundry’, I just carry on doing.

My machine at an older office. It
ran Ubuntu Linux (see daily photolog)

OME would argue that the ‘market share’ of Linux has long ago exceeded 4%. Installed based, as opposed to market share, is difficult to gauge. People install Linux as they download or pass CD’s around. They do not buy Linux because Microsoft has a chokehold on OEM’s (AKA ‘Windows tax’, c/f 1, 2, 3). It’s a strategic, anti-competitive tactic.

Web statistics studies are still biased because they usually exclude Linux sites, they throw away “unknown” (often Linux with diverse http-header footprint/string), they ignore Squid, they don’t account for agent forgers (not just for MISE-only sites), and they neglect to account all the traffic that comes from Windows zombies (Windows/IE). In short, they cannot be relied on.

What is the true ‘market share’ of Linux then? There is no way of knowing. Software that is passed from hand tom hand or gets downloaded remains quiet and obscure. But the truth is out there. One just needs to sweep away disinformation which is enforced by companies that have plenty in stake. One of my Web sites, which boasts over 1,000 visits a day, indicates that Linux has a market share of over 40%. It’s not a typical and mainstream site. But will Web survey ever wish to include such a site in a survey? Who will ‘sponsor’ Freedom and encourage outing of the truth? Studies are typically backed and funded by commercial bodies which select their desired hypothesis and fit the conclusions to it, by carefully choosing the methods and data.

Take everything with a large barrel of salt. Just some thoughts to ponder…

The CNN ran an article on some mind-boggling research. It addresses the obsession with capturing memories digitally. These things are, in my opinion, close to being pointless because too much information can/must be captured, e.g. sound, video, 3-D models, etc. The list is endless and the information cannot be conveyed and processed by one’s mind unless one lives in the past and reminisces in ‘slow motion’. I suppose it would be a nice way of remembering vacations, but for an indexable mind and knowledgebase, it’s just too big a task.

This particular research project is backed and run by Microsoft. If it ever becomes a reality, let us hope they will be careful with names. Zune is pronounced the same way as “a shag” in Hebrew (yes, the bad meaning; very vulgar) while Vista, at least in Malta, appears to mean “a whore” (or something along these lines, if I recall correctly).

Worth reading: an unrelated article with a Mac-slant, which discusses expansion through bundling of software.

IKIS and research are a funny dou. As I recently pointed out, Wikis are an excellent tools for improving researched-on, peer-reviewed content. On the other hand, as this new article with some general background and criticism suggests, a Wiki is susceptible to abuse if it’s too open to a wide audience.

Brent Freccia, a social studies teacher at Newark High School in Delaware and a self-proclaimed “avid wiki-person,” created an entry for his school on Wikipedia, the oft-visited online encyclopedia and go-to source for students writing research papers.

An example where things can go terribly wrong:

When Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was elected as pope last year, some Internet users who logged onto Wikipedia to see what he looked like found a rather different image: that of the evil emperor from “Star Wars.”

NLY a year ago, before ODF became the ISO standard, I had to engage in lengthy and complex arguments over formats. I was doing fine by my own, but the issue of exchange arises in wider public arenas. Not anymore though. The crowning of ODF gives all the protection that I require. Here is an anonymised E-mail that I have just sent.

>Dear Roy
>>
>> Please can you email a sample of your presentation file so
>> that the IT guys here can find the relevant software and
>> load it onto the equipment in the lecture room.
>>
>> Please send it by return

Hi [anonimised],

This file is in OpenDocument Presentation format, which
is the international standard for presentations (ODF). One
common applications that handles it is OpenOffice 2. I
understand that Microsoft intends to catch up with the standards
in Office 2007, essentially by supporting ODF through a plugin.

Many thanks in advance,

Roy

I will be presetning at Oxford University later this week.