Joe Wilcox, you should be ashamed of yourself.

Several days ago, I left a comment in his inherited Web site just to say that Microsoft hides some of its Vista weakness by secretly patching vulnerabilities. I even provided two links from very reliable source to support this. One of these sources was the Microsoft Blog at ZDNet. With further confirmations that this is true, I see no reason whatsoever why my comment should be removed. This leads to the suspicion that Microsoft Watch has turned from a professional Web site run by Mary Jo Foley into a Microsoft shilling dumpster. Several months ago, the site dropped its Windows server and had it replaced by Red Hat Linux. This is hypocritical, is it not?

It has become obvious (by admission) that many Microsoft employees visit the Web site and even comment without disclosure. I refuse to participate as much as I used to knowing that a site which once served me well has decided to lift and iron first and decide what is valid information and what is an inconvenient truth.

A couple of month ago, a colleague of mine from Netscape had a short interview on television. Since I haven’t posted in my blog in a while, I decided that I might as well drop this video here.

Henry explains in fairly simple terms what it is that we do in Netscape as Navigators (role has just been renamed “Scouts” to avoid confusion with the name of the Web browser).

Update: I’m not sure now if the video has been removed.

Update #2: It sure looks like the video was pulled. As an alternative video, here is the story of a top Digger.

NE of my hard drives died a horrible death yesterday. I am lucky to be able to even boot sporadically. It’s a physical error (it even makes funny noises). At the moment, I just use another PC of mine. Tomorrow I shall buy a new hard-drive and install a new GNU/Linux distribution. I was at first leaning towards PCLinuxOS 2007, but getting the ISO and burning it might take a little while. Ubuntu is almost a ‘default’ option nowadays. I used Ubuntu on 2 of my workstations in the past, but I prefer to go with a distribution that is KDE-oriented out of the box.

It seems like there is a busy weekend ahead. There are a lot of scripts and customisations running on my main box and they will need to be restored and tested. The experience will hopefully be a very educational one, but it will also mean not being involved in some of the forums and site which I routine participate in. Any ‘change in agenda’ (as in “unexpected event”) can be a fun one nonetheless. The next such thing will probably be my sister’s wedding in October.

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

Blogs and useless content aside, I think this screenshot I’ve just grabbed speaks for itself (click to enlarge).

N the face of it, measures are now being taken to ensure the environment gets treated better. For examples, disposal and recycling of machines will no longer be a pricey process, which therefore leads to encouragement of better practices. Good treatment of the environment does have a cost. It is a shame that greed remains the one and only enemy to proper preservation of Earth. Legistlation is needed in order to change this.

Happy surfing!

More and more people are now able to blog. With technical barrier lowered, more information can be delivered more quickly, whether we like this or now.

Most bloggers prefer mundane tidbits to deep thoughts, and backed by voice transcription and video sharing, the cell phone may soon be the tool of choice.

The prevalence of blogs is (just as expected) sucking some of the fun out of it. This lacks the appeal of a unique occuption. For myself, I predicted this over 2 years ago.

Are blogs dying as a whole? Not quite. Instead, blogs with a particular focus — blogs that deliver consistent content (not streams of consciousness) appear to survive. Here are the words of a man who cannot stand the disruption to his profession.

“Millions and millions of exuberant monkeys … are creating an endless digital forest of mediocrity,” Keen writes in a book published Tuesday.

His views have infuriated bloggers and others, especially in Silicon Valley, who argue he is an elitist intellectual, a conservative pining for a return to old ways, and a writer who cannot keep his facts straight.

As you look around the Web and track blogs that you used to read, often you find that the pace of blogging has declined significantly. In retrospect, blogs became very popular very fast, so they attracted many millions, which in turn led to the anti-climax. Long live the culture of personal blogs that were actually lively! Not many of them are left, unless you focus on “Internet celebrities”. Professional blogs replace drivel. I too have moved on.

HERE is an increasing number of companies which try to play the “source code” card when it fact they give nothing but binaries. This trend is worrisome. It is also disturbing because it adds ‘noise’ and makes it difficult to identify projects that are truly about collaborative development.

Here are some projects that thrives in Open Source status that is not truly deserved:

• Coverity – brags detection of defects in Open Source code, but proprietary nonetheless.
• Krugle – searches and indexes Open Source code, but if you talk the talk, you ought to walk the walk.
• Google – Thrives in the use of Open Source software, but lacks transparency (APIs are no code).
• Black Duck – verifies license compliance in open source projects, but still proprietary.

What does it all come down to? It’s nice when you speak about opening and sharing, but if your company only exploits this “Open Source” aura, then you can do more harm than good. Software opens up because it makes it better and development is sped up. Companies whose focus are other open source projects ought to realise this.