The Linux Extremist

I am probably an environmentalist’s worst nightmare. I drive a car that has sufficient horsepower to outpace a couple of hamsters running in a wheel and it isn’t a Volvo estate, a car which is only environmentally justified because they’re usually giant rolling billboards for a collection of eco-aware bumper stickers.

I don’t spend time picking my trash into separate neat piles; call me crazy, but my mother raised me not to play with garbage.

I was angry when they outlawed fox hunting because now I have to play Roadkill Obstacle Course every time I drive down the A286.

I don’t believe in global warming, or at least the man-made kind. I believe we’re having a hot summer, the best thing that ever happened to the bottled water industry since someone figured out how to spell “naive” backwards - however temperatures throughout history have risen and fallen. At some point in the distant past, temperatures rose so high that 90% of life on earth was wiped out. But that was well before humans were here.

I don’t get all gooey for endangered species either. I believe Canadians should be free to kill baby seals lest our friends from the Great White North turn into homicidal maniacs due to the tedium of the long winters, and out of general principles: anything cute enough for the cover of a greeting card deserves to have its lights put out. Furthermore, as John Maynard Keynes said, “In the long run, we’re all dead.” We’re all extinct too; the dinosaurs became extinct and no one over the age of 7 is crying about it.

Now that I’ve said enough to make every Greenpeace activist want to take up arms, or bongs stuffed with marijuana against me, perhaps I should explain where their views kind of, sort of, maybe coincide with mine. When the greens actually get off the patchouli and start speaking to humans instead of dolphins, they have an important point to make about waste.

Being against waste is not necessarily a green point of view. People who were against waste used to be called thrifty and practical. During World War II, this prudence was expressed in the British slogan, “Make do and mend”. Don’t throw something out that might have a utility, find a re-use and make do, in other words, recycle before you put something in the garbage, not after. In a modern context, Linux is the perfect “make do and mend” operating system. Rather than having to dispose of an old PC, and deal with the associated costs of the metals, plastics and composites being either disposed of or recycled, one can continue to make do with what one has. Windows and Intel, on the other hand, want you to pack the old PC in and get a new, more powerful one to run Vista, with the costs of disposal and the creation of a new PC associated with it.

So why isn’t Greenpeace talking about this? Why does the Sierra Club’s web server run on Windows? Why isn’t the Microsoft campus filled with hippies protesting the imminent arrival of Vista saying, “Hey ho, hey ho, Aero has got to go”?

Perhaps it’s partially because many of the costs are invisible. Seated at one’s desk, a nice neat computer doesn’t appear to have much in terms of environmental implications; it’s difficult for the average person to connect that PC with the costs of mining, petrochemicals and transport. It’s much easier for them to make environmental connections with exhaust that is coming out of their old Ford Escort.

A more cynical reason may have something to do with Bill Gates being the world’s leading philanthropist, in terms of raw financial power anyway. While there is no direct evidence to suggest that environmentalist organisations are avoiding criticising Microsoft (and Intel), it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that direct opposition to the waste inherent in the Wintel model might make Mr. Gates upset, and thus jeopardise a potentially rich source of funds.

Certain greens might take umbrage at that suggestion and say, “Are you daring to suggest that we are corrupt?” Nah, not really, I’m suggesting that you’re human. 9 times out of 10, people will do what is expedient rather than what is principled. The same goes for organisations, no matter if they ensure they only stock fair trade muesli in the office kitchen.

The truth is, people have gotten used to waste, even in our environmentally sensitive times. We don’t think of recycling before we separate our trash; we’ve lost the “Make do and mend” mentality of our forebears, which ensured that we extracted every last scrap of value out of what we buy before we disposed of it. It’s only in rare instances where that mentality survives.

More than likely, people will continue to be wasteful. It’s never been “cool” to be thrifty. Maybe the Greens, with their access to so much of pop culture would like to change that, but I doubt it. Besides, Tracy Chapman singing “Make do and mend” would probably be a horror to behold. Still, those of us who are labouring in the bowels of information technology will do our best to practice real conservationism, even if outside of technology we’re as eco-insensitive as, well, me.

Yesterday, after I finished building a custom desktop PC and had it working beautifully with Ubuntu Linux, I decided to do some sums on how much more the system would have cost me if I used Windows software instead.

For the purposes of this exercise, I assumed I’d get the system builder’s discount (i.e., OEM software). I also assumed that I would want to be able to use Office software that had roughly as many functions OpenOffice and a graphics programme to use in place of GIMP. To make matters absolutely fair, I opted for Corel’s Paint Shop Pro rather than say, Adobe Photoshop for the comparison.

The costs are as follows:

Windows XP Professional OEM - £98.08
Microsoft Office (Small Business Edition) OEM - £157.74
Paint Shop Pro - £67.85

This yields a grand total of £323.67. In one fell swoop, I doubled the cost of the PC.

My initial outburst after doing this sum is not repeatable in polite company. Let’s just say it involved suggesting certain members of Microsoft’s board were guilty of gross sexual misconduct. I simply couldn’t believe it at first; it seems illogical that to do absolutely everything I can do for free with Linux, in order to do the same with Microsoft, I’d have to spend twice as much. To be absolutely fair, I could use OpenOffice and GIMP on Windows, but these solutions are not what Microsoft want me to use; rather, their policies indicate it is just and proper that the price of my PC just doubled. Worse, these costs are a norm which far too many inexperienced users unquestioningly accept. To paraphase Malcolm X, they didn’t land on Microsoft, Microsoft landed on them.

This disparity has an implication for the so-called “digital divide”; the poor in both Western countries and in the Third World are often denied access to technology for a number of reasons: in the Third World it mostly has to do with infrastructure (broadband, availability of computers, etc.) but software costs are a component. In the West, it’s very difficult to get a PC that isn’t bundled with Windows; most manufacturers are bound by strict agreements with Microsoft to do so. The addition to the pricetag serves to keep technology out of their hands. Again, they didn’t land on Microsoft, Microsoft landed on them.

Businesses, fortunately, are increasingly turning to Open Source to provide their needs. For example, as of February 2006, Apache’s open source web server software powers 68% of all sites. Yet, Microsoft still has a big foothold in most companies through Access, SQL and .Net solutions. In my small company, we had to pay over £40,000 last year in licensing costs alone; had we gone Open Source, the cost would have been £0. This has eaten into our profits and meant that capital expenditure on other items, more conducive to productivity, has been diverted. Although in this instance, a previous manager did land on Microsoft, Microsoft landed on us as well.

Overall, to again quote Malcolm X, we’ve been “bamboozled, hoodwinked, flimflammed.” We’ve been robbed blind, we’ve been given few, if any other options. We’ve just lived with Microsoft, with its costs, its security vulnerabilities, its bugs, its faults, its foibles and a software philosophy that emphasises on making an operating system as big and as resource hungry as possible.

Fortunately we don’t have to live with it any longer. Projects like Ubuntu Linux mean that high quality software is available to all without cost. Other projects come directly from the wrong side of the digital divide, likely in an effort to climb over the hurdles Microsoft presents: for example, Conectiva and GoboLinux originate from Brazil.

According to the Economist, Bill Gates is worried that Microsoft is going to end up like another Digital Equipment Corporation, an overweight giant that collapsed in on itself. I remember working as an intern in the IT department of Barclays Bank in 1990, and thinking much the same about DEC as I think of Microsoft: their solutions were overly proprietary and they kept on landing heavy costs on us. The moment Barclays had a chance to break away, they did. This moment has come for users. We need not let Microsoft land on us any longer, rather, it’s time for the consequences of pushing an outdated business model land on them.

I got approval from Group IT for my little project to build my own Linux desktop PC for my office. The parts arrived today. The good news is that I have it up and running after a few hours work; the better news is that a secondary experiment, trying to select components that are instantly detected by Ubuntu succeeded, including the wireless network card.

The parts I chose are as follows -

1 Gigabyte GA-K8NE (rev. 2.0) motherboard (Socket 754)

2. AMD Sempron 3100+ processor

3. Corsair 1 GB 400 Mhz memory module

4. Seagate Barracuda 120 GB hard drive (7200 RPM, 8 MB cache)

5. Creative Soundblaster Audigy Card

6. Gigabyte Nvidia GeForce 6600 PCI-E graphics card with 256 MB RAM.

7. SMC Ez-Connect Turbo Wireless PCI Card (SMCWPCIT-G)

8. NEC DVD-RW Drive

I didn’t bother getting a floppy drive as I haven’t used floppy disks since the Clinton Administration.

I put all the parts together in an X-Power C100 desktop case - it’s plain, it’s ugly, it’s beige. The idea was that a plain, drab exterior was going to hide a powerful PC. This particular case was a mistake, though - the X-Power case is painfully cheap - and I managed to cut myself on one of the sharp edges whilst putting the system together.

Apart from losing some blood, assembly was fairly straightforward - the motherboard is not the nicest fit in this case, but adequate. I did have to have an extra IDE cable on hand to connect both the DVD RW and hard drives.

Once up and running, I went into the BIOS, and modified the configuration to turn the motherboard’s sound off - otherwise this would confuse Ubuntu during setup. I then put in the Desktop CD and found, to my joy, all the hardware worked. Installation was similarly painless. Yes, there were a lot of updates to download, but the combination of the fast wireless, hard drive, processor and memory meant it did not take long.

I used EasyUbuntu to configure most of the multimedia items and the Nvidia driver, with the exception of Flash and Java; these I downloaded and installed myself. In order to set the driver up fully, there is one last step to follow - go into Applications > Accessories > Terminal and then type:

sudo nvidia-xconfig

Reboot, and the system should now use the correct driver. Using the nvidia driver as opposed to nv is very important - I found for some odd reason that the video card ran very hot using nv - it cooled right down using nvidia. Perhaps the nvidia driver makes a much more efficient use of resources; in any case, it is a critical addition to prevent a meltdown.

I also had to fiddle with the sound card settings in order to make it run with Flash and other applications. I opened up a Terminal window and typed -

cat /proc/asound/modules

There I found the name of my sound card.

I then typed -

sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base

Which opened up gedit. At the end, I tacked on the following line for my Audigy card -

options snd-ca0106 index=0

If you’re trying this at home, substitute whatever sound card name you have for the “snd-ca0106″ - change underscores to dashes.

With the correct settings in hand, the PC was fully ready to go. The broadband connection here at the office is not particularly great, but the wireless card (configured on ath0) picked it up automatically and made the best of it - I will run tests with it at home at some point to see how well it performs there. That said, the people at SMC and Ubuntu have done very well - this is by far the most painless wireless card installation I’ve ever had on a Linux distribution.

Overall, the PC runs quietly, efficiently, and very fast. I will add more memory next month as well to see if there are any performance gains; but even without an extra 1 GB of RAM, it’s so fast it could be called Beige Lightning and it’s a perfect counterpoint to my dull, drab Windows PC.

I am a “24″ junkie. “24″, for those who are not aware, is a television show starring Kiefer Sutherland, and each season (there are 5 so far) focuses on a day in the life of Federal agent Jack Bauer. The show is remarkable not only because of its peculiar “hour by hour” format (i.e., each episode represents an hour in a single day), and Jack Bauer’s seeming iron bladder (not once does he stop for a tinkle), but also because it provides a lesson to all those watching: never, ever say “things couldn’t get worse”. In “24″, things getting worse is a way of life.

Jack Bauer is a cult hero and has many active fans on the internet. However, after going through the first 3 seasons this past week, I’ve discovered that my favourite character is a bit different from the norm. I’m a big fan of the character President David Palmer, as played by Dennis Haysbert.

Part of the explanation has to do with Mr. Haysbert’s portrayal: he certainly has a grip on the aura that a Commander in Chief should have. He comes across as being articulate and thoughtful. However, much of it has to do with a longing that perhaps many people in Western democracies share: we wish that leaders in politics and business were more like David Palmer.

Consider the qualities of President Palmer. First, he has insight. In every show, he accurately reads the motives and emotions of his subordinates and colleagues. This was particularly evident in Season 1, where he consistently outfoxed his scheming wife Sherry. In fact, he had her so outgunned and outclassed, it was a wonder she continued to bother trying to deceive him. Perhaps one of the finest “gotcha” moments in television was when Palmer set his wife up to see if she would destroy a vital cassette by planting a fake, and upon discovering that she had, he produced the real one.

In addition, Palmer has integrity. One consistent theme of Palmer’s career is his utter dislike of having to conceal the truth, let alone lie. For example, he bit the bullet in Season 1 and told the truth about an accident involving his son Keith and was disgusted by the idea of having to do otherwise. Also, Palmer utterly despises the idea of “plausible deniability”, that is, things being done in his name of which he was not fully aware. His anger in Season 3 at Jack Bauer’s “off the record” mission was all too evident.

Palmer has authority. Perhaps some of it has to do with Mr. Haysbert’s height as well as his acting skills, but there is a definite air of command eminating from the character. The actors refering to him as “Mr. President” say the title with reverence. Additionally, Palmer is steadfast in his refusal to bow to personal blackmail, as evidenced by his determination not to fire his brother as Chief of Staff under pressure from a major campaign donor.

Palmer faces issues directly. In Season 1, when Palmer suspects Jack Bauer of orchestrating an attempt on his life, his response was to go straight to Bauer’s office and confront him privately. Bauer, of course, was not guilty of the charge, and Palmer apologised with good grace.

Finally, Palmer has honour. When he is wrong, he accepts the blame, as he did in Seasons 1 and 3. He does not let others pay the price for his own mistakes, or at least, he does everything possible to ensure they do not. Furthermore, he refuses to abandon people for reasons of convenience, for example, he refuses to ditch his girlfriend in Season 3 merely because she is politically embarassing to have around.

All in all, he’s upright, honest, what would be called a “stand up” guy. Yes, he makes controversial decisions, but the sum total is a character that is possibly the most fictional politician ever to appear on television.

It is fair to say that those of us who still vote, and I am among them, have hopes that we are electing a David Palmer. It is fair to say that when we put our trust in a product that’s for sale, or take out a bank account, or believe in the clergy, we hope we are dealing with a succession of David Palmers. It’s almost never true; but perhaps the presence of Palmer in “24″ is the expression of some archetypal desire that we can have leaders in politics, commerce and religion who are honourable and decent. The question is why is there such a distance between this common longing and what we actually get.

Palmer died at the beginning of Season 5 of “24″. Presumably, Mr. Haysbert had other projects to work on, and fair play to him, no one wants to be typecast. However, I for one will miss the idea that somehow we could have decency in leadership, even if it is just fiction. I suspect I’m not alone.

A short story which I’ve written is now available for download. The story is entitled “Diary of a Narcissist” and it is loosely based on my experiences in the technology industry - I’ve worked for some pretty bad companies and had some fairly horrendous bosses. I’ve put together a story which shows the distorted thought processes of these people by combining their insanity into a single fictional mass of ego and mania.

You can download this story by filling out the simple form on “The Diary of a Narcissist” page; the link is on the right hand side of this page. Click it, fill out the form, and the story will be e-mailed directly to your inbox.

Please advise if you have any problems. Thank you!

My favourite science fiction author is Frank Herbert, the creator of the Dune series of novels. The philosophical themes he embeds in his intriguing stories are most compelling: three of most important of these are, first, we should not allow computers to do our thinking for us, and second, conformity is to be avoided, and finally, predictablity is death.

In the panoply of Herbert’s work, these themes manifest themselves in a tale in which humanity has narrowly avoided subjugation by machines by invoking an anti-thinking machine jihad, and avoiding conformity, predictability and extinction through a “Scattering”, after the collapse of an enforced Peace in a single Empire has caused the energies of humanity to burst out across the universe.

The validity of Herbert’s philosophy has been argued since his work was published. After all, humanity did not appear to be on the verge of being enslaved by thinking machines when Dune was first published in 1964. The idea of humanity being homogenised to the point that it could be wiped out en masse also seemed somewhat far-fetched; though humanity appeared to be quite capable of wiping itself out due to its lack of homogenisation. The suggestion that predictablity was something to avoided also seemed a fallacy in times where stability was something for which many longed.

Modern computing, however, seems to provide empirical evidence for his thesis - in fact, Frank Herbert perhaps should be recognised as the first prophet of Linux.

Herbert’s concerns about machines doing our thinking for us finds eloquent expression in the Windows operating system. Think about how many decisions it makes for the user; think about how it decides what you need and how it decides to check the validity of your software. Nearly immune to customisation and a closed book to anyone who wishes further information about it, Windows draws much of the decision making about what goes on a computer and what the computer can and should do, back into the heart of the software rather than leaving it to the person who is actually supposed to be the PC’s master.

This philosophy finds its polar opposite in Linux. As Linux users are well aware, they are responsible for what is on their computer, they have to know what they require or not, and they have to personalise their computer to the extent they require. All in all, more thinking and control is exercised by the user; the computer returns to the idea of being a tool which inspires thought in the user rather than taking thought away. Herbert would have approved.

Additionally, Herbert’s warnings about humanity being more easily destroyed by homogeneity have recently been bourne out by what is happening to Windows; lately, there has been a blitz of viruses, trojans and other similar menaces to security. So many computers have been infected with these programming pests simply because so many computers are in Microsoft’s grip. By infesting so much of the technology world with Windows, it has become much more of a target, and that much easier for hackers to wreak havoc. Again, Linux, by emphasising diversity, seems to follow Herbert logic - there are many distributions and their numbers are increasing. Furthermore as each distribution has its own team of experts working at a variety of paces adding different features it is nearly impossible, logically, for hackers to make easy work of wiping them all out. Hackers may get some, but they will never get all, and thus, rather like humanity in Herbert’s work, computing continues on.

Diversity also addresses Herbert’s point regarding predictability. By having so many directions in which computing can go, Linux’s development is unpredictable as a whole. We may know what Ubuntu will be like in a year’s time, or what will be in the SUSE next release, however, we do not have an overall direction for Linux, nor can we predict with certainty where it will be in a year or let alone ten. In Herbert’s eyes, this is excellent, as it does not compel adherence to a single vision of the future, rather, it appears to be a system which creates momentum and crushes stagnation.

All that said, however, the best reason to consider Frank Herbert as the first prophet of Linux is that he would have resisted the idea of being a guru to anyone. After all, he once said -

Hang loose. And when someone asks whether you’re starting a new cult, do what I do: Run like hell.

Rather like the discreet, shy silence that Linus Tovalds maintains, Frank Herbert would have shunned the idea that he could provide a direction, rather he would have emphasised the idea that we all need to find a direction for ourselves. He would have liked the idea of a community of experts rather than following a single prophet, which is inherent in the Linux philosophy. It is a pity that he did not live to see Linux emerge; one can imagine him smiling at seeing so many of his ideas made flesh and perhaps if reluctantly, taking some pride in seeing how right he was.

I’m originally a Londoner, but I always wanted to move to the countryside, particularly after seeing how the other half live in December 1997. I was visiting a software firm; their offices were located in the middle of Dorset. I had to drive for hours on winding roads to a tiny village located in the middle of a small valley. The offices were above a pub and they had a T1 line. The fellow who ran the company, an ardent Linux advocate, excused himself at the end of the meeting by saying:

“I’m sorry, I have to go and play the piano at the village church for their Christmas play.”

I thought that was so cool.

After the meeting, I went for a walk along a country lane, sucking in the cool, clean air and when I looked up, I saw a strange sight - the most stars I’d seen anywhere outside a planetarium. At that moment, I knew that I had to get out of the city, and eventually I got my wish. Fast forward to 2006, and I’m presently looking for a little corner of West Sussex in which to permanently settle down.

My lovely, intelligent and wise girlfriend brought up a major point as we began our search: “Make sure you check out the internet services that are available.”

She knows me well. I am the type of person who insists on having an 8 MB business broadband line in my private home. She also realised, rightly, that what’s available to people in the countryside is not always as good as what the city slickers in London get. Presumably it’s the compensation for being jostled in the Tube on a daily basis, rising gun crime and property prices that would break the Bank of England - your life may be a load of camel excrement, but, hey, at least you have the latest and greatest broadband.

Fortunately service in the shires has improved; unlike that fellow in 1997, I don’t have to get a dedicated line to achieve a high speed connection. This year, I was able to make the leap from 2 to 8 MB, and believe me, there is a difference, particularly if you download Linux distros constantly like I do. So how does one maintain this high standard of living while looking for a new house? I’ve gathered a few hints.

1. Forget cable. Not that many people, particularly in the countryside, were going to be able to consider it; NTL claims that it’s only second to BT in terms of the size of its network, but what they don’t say is that it’s so far in second it’s not anywhere in sight. Furthermore, I have used their services before and found they were far less flexible than ADSL; equipment such as ADSL routers are far more generic than those one gets with cable broadband.

2. Get the postcode. The postcode of any property you consider is the first key to discovering what services are available.

3. Go to Yell. It’s fairly simple to plug the first part of a postcode of the property you’re considering and find the phone number of a local store, cafe or in some cases, farming equipment supplier. Generally speaking, the business will be on the same exchange as the property. The local exchange determines what broadband services are available.

4. Use the broadband checker on BT Broadband. It doesn’t matter if you want to use BT or not, they will be able to tell you how fast you can go, under most circumstances.

5. After you’ve found your speed, find your service using www.adslguide.org.uk. This is, by far, the best source of consumer advice on which one to pick.

6. If you’re renting, ask the potential service provider if they are part of BT’s programme which allows your services to be moved along with your telephone account. I found out I couldn’t do this with Bulldog the last time I moved and I was disappointed.

7. Try not to chew the carpet while you wait for broadband to be switched on. Bulldog was the worst in so far as that was concerned - I had to wait over a month. BT Business Broadband had me on in less than 5 days.

8. If you have wireless, remember you still need security. Even if your immediate neighbours are a bunch of cows in a pasture (as opposed to ones in semi-detached houses screaming at their 15 kids), switch on some form of filtering; wireless signals travel further than you think, and broadband leeches are always a danger.

Following these hints, I’ve managed to maintain my fast connection to the rest of the world, while staying away from it. As I pick a house which is still further buried in the shires, I am glad that it’s likely that I will be able to continue to do so.

It’s long been the tactic of fascist dictators to claim that their nations were the injured party in any dispute. Italy used a minor border fracas between Italian Somaliland and Ethiopia as a pretext for invading the latter in 1935. Prior to the Second World War, Hitler claimed he was only re-uniting long-suffering Germans when he swiped Austria and the Sudetenland.

Microsoft should pick up a few hints from these examples on how to be a bit more subtle. Kevin Turner, Microsoft’s Chief Operating Officer is apparently in greatest need of education; in a conference held yesterday, he was adamant that enterprise search software was something that Google simply could not have. He stated -

“Enterprise search is our business, it’s our house and Google is not going to take that business..those people are not going to be allowed to take food off our plate, because that is what they are intending to do.”

This statement is about as convincing as a claim of Ethiopian aggression, but let’s analyse it a bit further. Rather than say “we are a major player in the enterprise search market” or “we are the leader in enterprise search”, he said “it is our house”. Rather than acknowledge the positive force that competitive pressures bring to the market, or state that Microsoft was well positioned in a challenging marketplace to meet consumer needs, he said, “Google is not going to take that business.” and “Those people are not going to be allowed to take food off our plate”. In short, this is the cry of a monopolist who has seen their empire threatened by a new entrant into the market.

It is possible to excuse a certain level of corporate pride, but this tactless statement gives a clear insight into how Microsoft thinks. It’s not enough for them to be a market leader, it is a goal of Microsoft to eliminate choice. It’s not enough to provide a better product than Google, they have to deny them the space completely. Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein OS.

Lest that statement be considered extreme, consider the fine just levied by the European Union on Microsoft for not being forthcoming on information about Windows, which is creating difficulties for others who wish to write software for the platform. By witholding that information, Microsoft creates a situation in which they are not only the gatekeeper to development, they are also better positioned to enter any software market they choose at any time of their liking.

The control freakery of Microsoft is something to be despised, but not feared. Windows Vista, bulky, clogged with errors and with huge upgrade costs, may be the Microsoft equivalent of Operation Barbarossa. Except in this case, the biggest effect of the bomb Microsoft is about to drop is not only on any opponent, but on itself. Already, Ubuntu and other Linux distributions stand ready to accept fed up users with open arms.

Furthermore, Mr. Turner’s protestations aside, Google will threaten Microsoft’s dominance in enterprise search. Firefox will continue to eat into Internet Explorer’s base. The iPod will damage, if not destroy, any hope Microsoft had of entering the MP3 player market. Sony’s Playstation will still challenge the XBox. These factors, plus the pressure of security, virus and trojan problems as well as governments closing in, it may very well be time to warm up the fat lady to sing a few arias from Gotterdammerung. Certainly, Mr. Turner’s temper tantrum has the whiff of decay and decline about it, and gives off the impression of a once mighty titan trying to reach out and hold onto past glories, though they are slipping ever further out of his hands. In the end, I suspect, Windows will still be one choice among many, rather than many having one choice. Mr. Turner and his colleagues can cry about it all they like, but that future is fast approaching.

Not every moment in life is meant to be exciting. For every thrill ride, there is a long wait in line at the Post Office. For every gripping episode of “24″, there’s a documentary by Fred Dibnah talking about steam engines. For every Italy, there’s a Switzerland.

I tried to remind myself of this as I began to use the laptop that my company supplied to me yesterday, a HP Compaq nc6220. For every computer that I build and upgrade, and makes me want to crank up Beethoven’s 9th as I surf the internet at warp speed, there are computers like this very bland, safe little laptop.

First impressions of the laptop were very good. At first, I thought it was an IBM Thinkpad in drag: the metal cover, the “nipple” mouse in the middle of the keyboard, all suggested a lineage back to the Thinkpads. I haven’t investigated it, but it would not surprise me if it was a rebranded Lenovo product. It’s very light, particularly compared to my old HP Compaq nx7000.

It’s only when the laptop is fired up the tedium begins. The system boots quickly; it has a 1.73 Ghz Centrino processor and 512 MB of RAM, plus a fairly capable hard drive. Somehow it crunches through the leaden code of Windows XP Professional with relative ease. However, the laptop screen itself is fairly hard on the eyes - compared to the quality of my nx7000, it’s quite poor and fuzzy. Graphics are supplied by Intel’s Integrated Graphics, which is the kiss of death in so far as any presentational quality is concerned. That said all the software loaded onto it, and I made a point of putting on Openoffice and Firefox, boots fairly quickly and performs well.

I did wonder if the system would perform even better with Linux, so I tried it out with an Ubuntu Dapper Drake Live CD. There were a number of booting errors; however, once these passed, it was clear that Ubuntu was designed to handle virtually all of the hardware on the laptop - wireless worked instantly, as did sound. But at the same time, it could not be described as an inspiring computer experience, merely an adequate one.

It was at this point that I had my epiphany; this is the perfect office machine. You wouldn’t want to do anything but work on it. There’s no fun to be had with it; you wouldn’t dare play a game, nor even have an interesting desktop image (believe me, I tried). It functions, it does its job well, and it’s fine. Switch it off at 6 and leave it behind.

I’ll never fully enjoy using it. But that isn’t the point; for the exciting experiences in computing I have using Linux and tinkering with my computers, this is its diametric opposite. I may long for and enjoy using computers that push the boundaries, but the nc6220 is all business. And perhaps business requires computers that are merely born to be mild.

I am not a big fan of the European Union. My first encounter with the institution was in 1994, when I visited the Commission headquarters as part of a student group. The facilities were extremely impressive; the offices were very plush and modern. The air conditioning was so powerful that it made the place virtually arctic on what was a hot summer day. I suppose I was somewhat awed by it all, but then I realised I was paying for it through taxes on my meagre student job wages. By the time I left, after I had seen their deluxe coffee making facilities and sat in their comfy chairs for half an hour, the word “bastards” was springing to mind in staccato bursts.

My second encounter was no better. I lived in Belgium as an expatriate in 2001. For those of you who are not Belgian, you may not realise that most of the good people there work for the benefit of the state before themselves; taxation was so high that part of my wages were paid in luncheon vouchers as a tax dodge. Then I found out that the European Union bureaucrats living in Belgium don’t pay any income tax. The word “bastards” sprang to mind with even greater force.

It would be bad enough if the bureaucrats were simply living off the state. However they’re not just plain old ordinary “bastards”, sometimes they’re “damn silly bastards” to boot. Take for example, Council Regulation 2257/94. This regulation states that bananas must not have an abnormal curvature, and must be at least 139.7 millimetres long and 26.9 millimetres round.

So for someone who snickers every time he sees the UK Independence Party poster stuck to a tree on the A285 between Petworth and the junction of the A27, to praise the European Union neither comes easily nor naturally. They’re still damn silly bastards, but I am grateful for the July 12th intervention of the EU’s competition commissioner, Neelie Kroes, against Microsoft.

Governments back down to large corporations all the time; they’re rightly worried about the damage that can be done to the economy if they are too heavy handed. Microsoft’s presence permeates Europe; it’s a grand irony that Ms. Kroes probably transcribed her decision to fine Microsoft in Word.

That said, she was unflinching. She did the right thing; for far too long, Microsoft has made it difficult for rival firms to write programmes for Windows, so that it could control not just the platform but all the software that runs on it. The Commission demanded that Microsoft be more forthcoming to rectify the balance. Microsoft did not do what was required of them; she did not give them an extension, she did not show any sign of appeasement, nor did she show fear. Instead, she hit them with a €280.5 million fine, and warned them of new fines totaling €3 million per day if they did not comply.

I suspect Microsoft was as surprised as I was that an institution so plagued with privilege and torpor would stand up to them. However, this is apparently part of a greater flow of events; the tide is turning against the folks at Redmond. It was reported in The Register today that Bill Gates himself would be “glad” if Windows Vista was delayed past January, and said there was a 20% chance of that occuring. Yesterday, Microsoft gave up the fight against viruses and trojans in Windows 98 and ME by discontinuing support for those products. All in all, it’s been a bad day for Microsoft, on top of a bad week, on top of a bad year. Considering Microsoft’s behaviour and its insistence on pressing its outdated business model on the consumer, it’s just desserts indeed.