The Linux Extremist

As an insatiable blogger, I don’t just write in my blog, I read others as well. One of the more interesting threads I’ve been following lately has to do with the travails of a young lady who is just getting introduced to Linux. She’s been playing around with Live CDs in the hopes that one distribution is going to work perfectly with her wireless card. Unfortunately, the chipset she’s working with means this isn’t likely; it’s a Broadcom wireless card, and native Linux support is iffy at best: in fact, I’ve not heard of it working except with some hacking around. Most of the time, one has to use ndiswrapper. I’ve done it myself; all told, it took less than 10 minutes, and I was up and running.

What struck me about her plight is her apparent refusal to just install a distribution of Linux on her hard drive. What she wanted was to somehow slipstream these hacks into a Live CD, or alternatively onto a USB key, before daring to actually take the plunge.

I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but this simply isn’t going to work. Working with Linux does require having a sense of the value of play, and being willing to engage in it, even if that involves risk.

“Play” is an often underrated word. Strangely enough, I learned its true value from John Cleese. A very long time ago, when I was a trainee with the British computer company ICL, I saw a videotape of a speech he gave regarding the virtues of “play”. He was doing this in his capacity as the owner of a training videos company called Video Arts.

Mr. Cleese stated that a study of the most effective people in British organisations had in common their ability to play. By this, he meant play with ideas, notions, scenarios and yes, mechanisms. Much of the time, play is a process of experimentation as well as amusement.

This thought reoccured to me when I was learning about Linux; I’ve often had to engage in informed “play” in getting various device drivers to work. At the beginning, I made plenty of mistakes; I screwed up machines, wiped them clean and started again. But trying out new ideas showed me what worked and what didn’t. The feedback loops from these processes combined and eventually I knew what I was doing. This blog’s how to sections are an attempt to provide the results of further “play”, so as to assist others in their “play”.

My advice to anyone who is as nervous about moving from the Live CD state to an “installed” state is this; back up your critical files onto a USB key or writeable CD and go for it. Yes, there is an overhead if not all of your devices are instantly detected by Linux; to be perfectly honest, Linux is better at this than Windows. I have never been in a situation when I’ve installed Windows and not had to have a packet full of CDs with device drivers on them.

Get used to the idea, if you’re a newbie, that you may install the OS a few times before you fully get the hang of it. Be prepared for making a mess of things and experiment. Once you’ve gone through the learning curve, then share the knowledge you’ve gained with others. But above all, keep hold of the element of play; be prepared to try new ideas, even if they sit outside the how-tos on the web or in books.

In the final analysis, this is one of the strengths of Linux; engaging in this process means that the average Linux user has a lot greater idea about what is going on with their computer than the average Windows serf. From knowledge comes the ability to customise and control, and thus, better computing. Not bad for a virtue as underrated as play.

Some of the people reading this article may be using a brand new laptop. I have some news for those individuals: your ceaseless hunger for ever more powerful machines is responsible for everything from the recent Dell and Apple battery fires to the next dot com bust. In other words, you’re naughty, evil and bad.

It’s not me who said this, rather it was stated in an article entitled “Crunch Time For Power Hungry Silicon”, written by Richard Waters, which appeared in Monday’s Financial Times Europe. According to him, our need for ever more powerful lightweight machines is creating a problem as battery technology is not keeping up with the demands of new processors. In his opinion, it’s doing things like “streaming racy videos from YouTube” or “cruising your friends photographs” which is causing a “fever in your laptop’s silicon brain”. The law of diminishing returns is coming into effect in our attempts to extend present battery technology. The mobile internet is about to be frozen in stasis. We’re all going to die or be poor, whichever is worse. Film at 11.

All this drama strikes me as rather funny. Personally, I can use all the multimedia features of the internet without any trouble using a relatively old laptop, one which isn’t likely to burn down my house. The difference is, I’m using Linux.

It appears that Mr. Waters has difficulty getting to the root of the problem; the real issue is the operating system. What if I were to tell you that it is possible to have a fully functional, modern desktop PC running off the same processor that is used in handhelds and other small portable (i.e., low power) devices? It’s true; a company in Britain called Iyonix PC (www.iyonix.com) offers PCs using the Intel Xscale processor. It’s intended for use with RISC OS, but also can be used with a variant of Debian Linux, a solid choice of modern operating system. With Debian and either KDE or GNOME, all the features that a modern user could want for office tasks, web browsing and potentially even streaming video are available, with a fraction of the normal power requirements. This fact simply is not well known.

The dirty little secret of the PC industry is that most users don’t need as much of the processing power and energy usage as they are presently consuming; the Windows / Intel cycle of creating an ever larger operating system which requires ever more processing power to use it is creating this situation. Users just are not aware of alternatives, and alternatives are not presented to them; there’s big business in keeping them in the hamster wheel of hardware and software replacement. There’s not enough of a sales story for people like Microsoft in saying their latest product will be more efficient in its use of resources, as opposed to having more novelty.

To be fair, those who do present an alternative are not helping matters either. It’s disappointing, but Iyonix are not offering a laptop. Acorn PC, a defunct British manufacturer of RISC OS PCs, just had its trademark bought by another company; this firm has decided to offer standard Windows laptops rather than doing something really interesting and offering the low power, high performance PCs that consumer can and should get.

In fact, the only low power device that is presently a working model of this concept is the $100 laptop that is being produced for children in the third world. This laptop proves that one can have a machine running Linux with wireless internet capabilites, with a processor that only requires a human turning a crank to make it work.

For the moment, however, we are going to live with the threat of exploding laptops; Dell and Apple are likely to be the butt of jokes for some time. I am sure any employee presented with a new laptop from either of these manufacturers is going to have a slight worry that their boss may be trying to kill them. The battery manufacturer, Sony, just slashed its profit projections thanks to these recent incidents. Perhaps there will be a slowdown in the development of mobile technology. This actually might be a cathartic experience for consumers and businesses, and refocus their minds on what is really important: efficiency, quality and durability, and frankly what would be really magnificent, an Xscale laptop running Debian, accessing the wireless at high speed while remaining cool and collected. For the moment, though, that’s just a dream.

For those who truly want to get away from it all, there are few cities in Western Europe more tenuously linked to the rest of the world than Kassel, Germany. It’s so remote and obscure that it never would have occurred to me go there had it not been for the fact that’s where my girlfriend presently lives. What she told me about it didn’t precisely recommend it, however. She told me it has a reputation as being the “most East German city in Western Germany”. I visited East Berlin just after the Wall fell; it was obvious as soon as I crossed the border that public works people were trying to repair a problem with the city sewer. Perhaps it was a statement on Communism: a country that was short on food was full of excrement.

Kassel’s resemblance to East Germany, fortunately, comes from its proliferation of large avenues, squares and “shoebox” buildings. It also has a distinctly “red” feel, with large streets named after Friedrich Ebert (one of the founding fathers of the Social Democrat Party), Willy Brandt (a Social Democrat Prime Minister, who left office under a cloud as his administration was infiltrated by East German spies) and Dag Hammerskold (one of the first Secretary Generals of the United Nations). That said, it has the benefit of fresh air, a couple of good local beers, some spectacular hills surrounding the town, and the wonderful Orchid Garden restaurant, which serves excellent Thai food. My one regret is not having had the opportunity to go to Kassel’s famous Museum of Death, which sounded like a lot of fun. Still, it was a good holiday with the woman I love, and indeed, a huge break from the norm.

Waiting in Frankfurt Airport to go back was an extremely boring business: the plane was delayed. Rather than waste the time, I decided to get on the internet at the airport, peruse the newspapers and magazines, and see if I could get a quick idea on the state of Linux in Germany.

Germany and Linux are definitely intertwined. After all, one of the most popular distributions, SUSE, has its origins in Germany. Anecdotal evidence suggests that Linux use in Germany may be a bit more prevalent than in other countries; certainly their Linux community is lively. For example, one of the most clever wallpapers I’ve ever seen was a “Linux für Deutschland” image of the Brandenberg Gate: instead of a figure of a chariot drawn by four horses, some clever artist had substituted Tux for the animals.

While an airport survey was unlikely to yield much in the way of solid data, one can get an impression. I thought, “if I walk into the newsagent, how many Linux magazines will I see? What kind of content will those magazines have?” Fortunately, I do read and speak German (which my German work colleagues find odd; English speakers are notoriously non-multilingual in their eyes) so I could get a good idea as to the what the press was saying.

There were two Linux magazines in the airport newsagent. This is actually good, because the newsagent at Frankfurt airport did not have a huge selection for those interested in technology. I chose the PC Welt Linux magazine, which is apparently published 4 times a year.

The magazine is pure Linux evangelism: it came with a DVD that had 9 different distributions of Linux, ranging from Ubuntu to Damn Small Linux. It also came with reviews and guides for Ubuntu and Suse. It also provided a good list of graphics software, and a list of helpful websites. Admittedly, while I’m not a regular reader of techology magazines, I do not believe I’ve seen a more effective presentation of Linux and its benefits in any language.

After perusing the magazine, I wandered down to the internet kiosk to get a further idea of how deeply Linux had penetrated the German market. Some quick research brought up some notable finds. An article written in 2004 stated that German life insurance company LVM was running a pilot programme with Red Hat Linux on the desktop; the city government of Munich opted for 14,000 Linux desktop computers. That said, there is no evidence at first glance to indicate that there is greater uptake of Linux on the desktop in Germany than elsewhere, but at the same time there is no reason to believe that Germany is lagging behind. Rather, Germany appears to be one of the leading Linux nations.

This makes sense; Germany’s biggest virtue has always been precision engineering. Other countries go for having good wine or good living, but to each their own. The German emphasis on reliability and quality makes their country a very poor fit for Windows. Additionally, the Germans have a disdain for paying too much for anything; the profilieration of bargain stores like Lidl is indicative of this trend. Furthermore, their obvious preference for home-grown solutions suggests to me that with a bit more advocacy and marketing, SUSE could be in a position for significant liftoff in the German market. “Erfolg durch Stoltz” (Achievement through Pride) could mean Germany gives us a clue to how a post-Windows future could develop and what it will look like. Or not, they could remain in the Windows ghetto with the rest of us; however, for now, it continues to bear watching.

It’s been a rough week. The next 6 months of my working life will involve getting my company off the Microsoft diet and onto Open Source; in the meantime, it’s time to lift that poisoned chalice and chug-a-lug.

Living with an e-commerce application running off of Microsoft technologies has made me grey before my time. Even as I sit here and calmly type in my blog at 9:30 at night, I have to maintain a Firefox tab focused on the website. Every few hours, I test the search facility and make sure it’s responsive.

Admittedly, these are extreme circumstances, when Microsoft is not just bad, it’s hideous. The code is classic ASP rather than ASP.NET. The server is running Internet Information Server 5.0 on Windows 2000; there are issues with it which Microsoft says only an upgrade to IIS 6.0 on Windows Server 2003 will solve. Sadly, we are doing this as an interim measure, but until the upgrade occurs, the struggle to keep IIS crashes to a minimum goes on. At the moment, it’s my life: when a crash occurs, there is an automatic reboot, but sessions are lost in the process. As the server is running business critical applications, this can cause trouble for customers, and these customers call me. Some plead, some get angry, some are just plain rude; I have to deal with them all, counsel patience and fix what I can in the meantime.

Still, I find myself looking at Netcraft.com perusing through server uptime records, in particular I look at servers belonging to previous employers. My favourites are those that are running FreeBSD; these days, seeing that a server I had built hasn’t needed a reboot for over 500 days is like being a child looking into a toy shop window at Christmas and realising that one is only going to get underwear and socks again.

There comes a point where it gets to be too much. It’s a 3 day weekend in Britain, thanks to the Bank Holiday on Monday. So for me, it’s time to get on a plane tomorrow and to leave the world behind.

Don’t get me wrong, I love technology. Here in my home, unlike at work, it’s all in perfect order, largely because Windows is banished; my inventory of computers is three Ubuntu PC, one Fedora Core 5 laptop, and one PC BSD desktop. All make using my 8 MB broadband pipe a joy. But somehow the joy is diminished by having to keep that blasted tab open on the Microsoft server. So now that a three day weekend has come, it’s time to leave it and the world behind; to get on a plane and fly away for a bit from the joys and pains of living with technology.

I am going to my girlfriend’s place in Germany. She has no ADSL. She has one Windows laptop; considering my feelings about Microsoft lately, I am not tempted to switch it on, particularly since her link to the internet is AOL. In effect, the thread connecting me back to the Net will be very slender indeed. It also means, however, that I am letting someone else worry about the Microsoft server for a change. Tomorrow, I will arrive to see the smile of my beloved and we’ll have a lovely time. I will wake up on Sunday morning and realise there’s nothing I can do about work at the moment, shut my eyes and fall back to sleep, and dream of West Sussex and of our solution one day running off of FreeBSD or Linux and the phone at work going strangely silent.

Being technically minded has its privileges in spite of numerous people asking for technical assistance. But I keep thinking about the phrase, “leave the world behind”. Sometimes, one has to do so for the sake of sanity. However I will remember Microsoft’s contribution to driving me to this end; I will also remember with love and gratitude the refuge that my girlfriend provides.

It’s been brought to my attention that not surprisingly, Microsoft advocates don’t like me or my blog very much. I’ve read some of their comments and interestingly, most of them don’t actually attack the substance of what I say, but rather make comments about me personally.

I don’t mind, really. It’s a free country (well at least it is here) and part of freedom is being able to spout off all you like, even if you’re not intelligent enough to use a proper operating system. I am able to fire back, and even if no knowledge is increased by the exchange, and I am specifically referring to our friends in the thrall of Redmond, at least there is sufficient tolerance that we can despise each other without it having any implications other than some words on a screen.

Tolerance is a vital, but confusing virtue. As this example shows, tolerance does not necessarily mean I have to like the Microsoft advocates. I’ll be blunt, I don’t. I think they’re snake oil salesmen peddling a shoddy piece of goods. They don’t necessarily have to like me; I regard it as a badge of honour if I’m on their bad list. It does mean, however, that we are both free to go our own way, and neither of us can inhibit each other from doing so. It also means that we accept that as the natural order of things; this is the basis of a free society.

Tolerance has suffered a good number of distortions in recent years. This is how political correctness got started; tolerance in the eyes of some got to mean that one could not offend anyone else, ever. To some, tolerance meant an endorsement of virtually anything (witness Jerry Springer guests) except intolerance, however that was defined. However true tolerance requires having the freedom to offend and the willingness to stand being offended.

This is a tough pill for some to swallow; for example, it means that the “artist” who feels free to put a crucifix in a jar of urine should realise that those who object to his pap are free to tell him he’s a no talent shock artist who really should learn to use a urinal like a grown up boy.

Tolerance also has limits; it is supposed to be a two way street. We in the West are often blindsided when we find that it isn’t. It completely breaks down when the a party that you’re tolerating wants you dead. A dramatic example was during the recent Islamist demonstrations in London; those who said things like “Behead those who insult Islam” are clearly not playing by the same rules as those who tolerated their right to be offensive, namely, the rest of the British public.

Truly, there needs to be a reiteration from the leaders of the West of what tolerance is really supposed to mean. It doesn’t help that they apparently walk on eggshells when trying to talk about the issue. They need to stand up and say plainly, those who can’t accept the principles of tolerance should not be tolerated; it’s sheer stupidity to extend a courtesy to someone who isn’t courteous in return. It should also be said, those whose egos are so fragile that they can’t accept criticism without calling for someone’s head are hypersensitive dolts; there are plenty of things in the world that are offensive, grow up, get used to it or get out.

I doubt that will happen, however. Fortunately, there is a safety mechanism in place; when the limits of tolerance are breached, people stand up and fight. It hasn’t reached quite that point yet, but just because we have not arrived at that particular destination, does not mean we won’t.

According to reports on BBC News, Britain is the country with the greatest penetration of digital television in the home. Most recent figures indicate that 70% of UK viewers have it. Of course the question that no one is asking is if that’s doing us any good.

A leading example is the UKTV History channel. It used to be that it was sort of like having CNN for 1945, complete with broadcasts of Churchill’s speeches and reports of Allied victories in France. It was refreshing to hear politicians speaking something other than waffle and see an actual enemy of humanity getting pounded into the dust.

UKTV History then decided to turn into the Fred Dibnah channel. Fred Dibnah, for those who aren’t familiar with him, was one of Britain’s last steeplejacks who somehow became a presenter of a series of programmes on 19th century industry. He had a coal mine in his back yard and was prone to saying things like “the scent of oil and steam should be made into a perfume” and telling the audience how he got a skin infection from allowing his cap to sit in a puddle full of pigeon droppings. In other words, he was Britain’s most tediously bizarre presenter, the God of the Train Spotters and their ilk.

The rest of television is not much better; as such, I’ve been watching my “24″ box sets repeatedly, Seasons 1 through 4, to the point where I wonder if it’s possible to burn them out. I am salivating for the arrival of Season 5.

I am happy to report that the show never gets repetitive or boring, in spite of repeated watchings. I have picked up on a small detail which provides a subliminal reason why I love this programme; it seems that Open Source is rife throughout the programme, to the point that it could be considered a long advertisement for it.

I have a bad habit of noticing what hardware and operating systems are being used, even when it’s just on television or film. While there are some Macintosh computers in use during the programme, it appears that most people are definitely not using Windows. The motif on the upper right hand corner of the windows is indicative of the X Window system, not Microsoft. Open Source even makes an appearance on one of the character’s home computers; in Season 4, Tony Almeida’s home PC appears to be using the Xfce desktop environment.

Terminology provides additional clues to the use of Open Source; the characters Edgar Stiles and Chloe O’Brian discuss “the kernel”, “the root”, and so on, in a way that Microsoft technologists do not. The combined linguistic and graphical clues suggest that “24″, in a very subtle way, is advertising all the works of Open Source. Definitely, Jack Bauer’s outfit is too intelligent to be caught dead using Windows.

In a strange sort of way, this is perhaps the most realistic aspect of “24″; it’s certainly much more true to life than Jack Bauer’s strange capacity to avoid eating or using the toilet. No one concerned with security should let Windows anywhere near their PC; an organisation that requires absolute, iron-clad data protection would be insane to use it. In this past week alone, it was reported that the number of “Zombie” PCs (i.e., those under the control of remote hackers for nefarious purposes) has shot up 23 percent due to a new software worm.

That said, the promotion of Open Source on “24″, may not be at all subliminal on the part of the show’s creators, or just an attempt to add realism to the programme. In addition to the clues in the show, it’s interesting that “24: The Game”, is made for Sony Playstation, the video games console that runs Linux. It’s not available for Microsoft’s Xbox.

So kudos to the producers, who are the bringers of good things, in a world of entertainment that is still benighted even though it’s digital. Not only is it gripping stuff, it’s technically correct, and as such, completely satisfying.

In case you missed the memo, the world is supposed to end today. Even the Register said good-bye this morning.

The reason we’re all doomed is that according to professor Bernard Lewis, Iran is going to nuke Israel; there is a scriptural reason to do so, apparently. According to Professor Lewis:

“This year, August 22 corresponds, in the Islamic calendar, to the 27th day of the month of Rajab of the year 1427. This, by tradition, is the night when many Muslims commemorate the night flight of the prophet Muhammad on the winged horse Buraq, first to ‘the farthest mosque,’ usually identified with Jerusalem, and then to heaven and back (c.f., Koran XVII.1). This might well be deemed an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel, and, if necessary, of the world.”

Of course, Israel would nuke Iran back, and a veil of atomic darkness would then descend upon humanity. The end.

It’s always funny to see how many people get worked up about the end of the world only for humanity to muddle through on the foretold day of destruction. I remember when Nostradamus scholars were warning of disaster in July 1999. I remember the days of “Mutally Assured Destruction” (when the United States and Soviet Union were toe to toe) and we could expect total annihilation at any moment, a fact which some people discussed to the point of tedium. Long ago, people believed that certain years, like 1666, which contains the “Number of the Beast”, were going to herald the end. The remarkable thing is that doomsayers continue to be listened to, even though their record is so poor: consider their 100% inaccuracy rate.

Humanity is a remarkably flexible creation. Yes, we have the ability to make a terrible mess of things; some countries have an amazing potential to create disaster. For example, in the 20th century alone, Germany sparked off the two largest wars the world had ever known. The Russians managed to breathe life into a political philosophy which killed over 100 million people and mismanaged a nuclear reactor until it exploded and dropped radioactivity all over Europe. Yet we’re still here. We still have all of our petty concerns about what’s on television tonight, what are we having for dinner, does our backside look big in a particular pair of shorts. There are still advertisements for scented tampons (leading to the very important question of who would actually benefit from them) and episodes of Big Brother and Cadbury Dairy Milk bars going bad at the back of the fridge. Humanity, for all its faults, just carries on.

As for today’s prediction of doom, I suggest there are some cooler heads in Iran who know that their country wouldn’t survive the attempt and given the rate that “martyrs” are being turned into compost lately, the supply of virgins isn’t what it used to be. Even so, war is going on in the Middle East right now; yet normal life, more or less, continues.

Don’t get me wrong though, humanity will one day end. However, it’s more likely to be in a T.S. Eliot way rather than in some dramatic cataclysm. For those who aren’t familiar with his poem, the Waste Land, the following lines are germane:

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper

If we’re going to end, it will likely be in a quieter way than in one giant explosion. Perhaps some disease will wipe us all out. Perhaps the earth will tilt off its axis and we’ll be burned by being too close to the sun or frozen by being too great a distance from it. Or perhaps, we’ll simply become extinct. It’s certainly true that in the West there are declining birth rates; thanks to contraception, we can think about the 3 AM feedings, the driving to school, the paying for university, the bailing out of prison for smoking pot for any potential child, and stop all that happening. Given that taxes are going up in many countries, there isn’t the money that there used to be to let it happen. On top of that, there are also all the “me” considerations; having 9 babies certainly does prevent buying an Audi A4 rather than a minibus, for example. If birth rates continue to go below replacement rates, humanity may slowly, gracefully teeter into an abyss. It would take a long time, however, and certainly, it would be an uneven process. It would not be at all as dramatic as a bomb, though, and therefore, less fun to get unhappy about.

Having said all that, I could be wrong. Ahmadinejad may be left unsupervised today and press the big red button behind his desk. Israel may fire back and a good part of the world may be turned into a blackened mass of desert sand turned glass. However, it’s unlikely. The end of the world is rather like death on an individual level; we know it will happen, someday. We can’t know the hour or the means by which it will happen. As such, there’s no point in worrying about it or even thinking about it, except of course, to have a good laugh at the doomsayers’ expense.

The industry in which I work is not the most technically minded. In fact, many people in my business regard the internet as strange and frightening. For the worst cases, finding the “On” button on the PC is a real achievement. This relative lack of computer savvy has led to some acute symptoms of technical backwardness; a leading example has to do with open standards for information transfers. In short, there are none. It’s not for lack of trying, my firm attempted to lead the way, however the initiative was de-railed by one company who held fast to the belief that if they control a proprietary standard, that they would make it easier to lock in clients. They think by owning the standard, they own the customer.

When I first heard about this, I experienced that rare and transcendent state one has when a conniption occurs. No one has yet been brave enough to tell me if I actually had steam coming out of my ears; apparently I did turn bright red, however. The source of my outrage is simple; I know that open standards are not only a good idea, but they are going to be critical to business in the future.

Firms who adhere to proprietary standards are parasites. They don’t compete on quality of service, rather, they are banking on inconvenience in translating between various formats. Contrary to what one might believe, it’s anti-capitalist; a truly free market calls for a level playing field. For that to exist, open standards should be ubiquitous.

Microsoft, as ever, is leading the struggle against progress. Their reluctance to comply with the Open Document Format is very well known. Similarly, Microsoft has always made it a much simpler matter to integrate like with like rather than allow technologists to mix and match; i.e., it’s far simpler to build an ASP.NET solution for MS SQL than it is to use PHP or Java. In a previous firm of mine, there was an attempt to integrate Perl with .Net technologies; after a great deal of time and money spent on the solution, it was abandoned due to performance issues. In my present firm, communications between PHP and ASP on our present e-commerce solution are so fragile that a schedule to move to make it completely Open Source was recently accelerated.

On the other hand, I can report examples of PHP working with Oracle, PostgreSQL and MySQL. I can report similarly good results with Java. These solutions have run off of Linux, Solaris and FreeBSD. There are some combinations more appropriate for some solutions, for example, for a high traffic e-commerce solution, I’d recommend a Java / Oracle combination, and for mid-size traffic site, I’d recommend PHP / MySQL; however, these technologies can interoperate without much difficulty.

Fortunately, more and more firms are waking up to the necessity of interoperable standards, not just for internal purposes, but also for common communications to the rest of the world. A good example is the travel industry, one of my previous stomping grounds. Opentravel.org has been publishing common XML schemas since 2001. This should be very surprising; speaking from personal experience, I can say a lot of travel firms absolutely despise each other. However, even they managed to see the benefits; travel providers win because they only have to expose their information in one format. Agencies win because their development costs are reduced because of having this easily accessible method. Furthermore, adopting these guidelines has made it easier for “agglomerators” to arise such as travelsupermarket.com, whereby consumers can compare fares; they win by getting cheaper travel.

When this progress is achieved through the length and breadth of technology, the same set of winners will be repeated. So why are so many industries still stuck in the past? In my opinion, it’s simply because the idea of top to bottom ownership is so seductive; everyone wants to be Microsoft. However, even Microsoft cannot be Microsoft any longer; their acceptance of ODF, albeit hesitant and reluctant, is a symptom of this. That said, arriving at the promised land of open standards will not be easy; it will require a lot of firms with a great deal of history of bitterness and rivalry to do something which does not come naturally, namely co-operate. However, if an industry as catty and divisive as travel can do it, so can all the rest, and so they will.

In the English speaking world, we’re used to the phrase “cheap and cheerful”.  We’re possessed by the notion that something that doesn’t cost much can be of good value; this drives the idea behind Wal Mart, ASDA and a number of other enterprises.

When my girlfriend’s old Dell blew up, she thought she would get a cheap and cheerful laptop to tide her over.  The German company Medion is a specialist in providing cheap computer hardware; so far as I know, they’re the only PC manufacturer cheap enough for Woolworth’s.  She bought their rock bottom model, the Medion / Microstar MIM2080.  And as soon as she could, she got herself a decent computer.

To say this laptop is a bad idea is to understate matters.  The spec is as follows:

1.5 Celeron M

VIA Graphics Card - 800 x 600 pixel display

256 MB of RAM

40 GB hard drive

The unit has no built in wireless networking and no PCMCIA slot.  Furthermore, the CD ROM drive is external and attached to the laptop by two USB cables.

I first tried Ubuntu; it crashed out due to being unable to work with the external CD ROM drive.  I then tried Fedora Core; I got into the start of the installation process, which was better, but then it “lost” the CD ROM drive; fortunately, the installer had an option for a network install.  In my case, I had to plug the laptop into my internet router and point it via HTTP to the following server -

http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/5/i386/os/Fedora/base/

The distro requires the file “stage2.img” in order to function.  However, once found, the installer then functioned on its own to completion.

Upon rebooting, Fedora Core 5 functioned well.  The limitations on the screen size and the lack of wireless are not the fault of the OS.  It booted reasonably quickly, and with an ethernet cable plugged in, Firefox was reasonably fast.  However Linux cannot cover the deficiencies of the machine.  The only way to go wireless with this laptop will be to purchase a USB dongle; in this case it may not be worth it.  The USB CD ROM does not appear to function with Fedora.  Overall, this laptop is plenty of cheap and not cheerful; fortunately, it does not appear that it is being made any longer.  It definitely will sit in reserve now that it is functional, but that’s the best that can be done with it.

Most of the spam that comes into my inbox is extremely boring. I have days when I get so many ads for dodgy pharmaceuticals that I fantasize about force-feeding spammers boxes of Cialis. Cialis, Viagra, Wellbutrin, Viagra, Cialis, Online Poker, Business Credit Cards, stocks in Chinese gold companies: the endless muck of spam just keeps flowing in, and is only notable for its tedium and its obvious chicanery.

This week, however, I received the following spam message:

Call out Gouranga be happy!!!
Gouranga Gouranga Gouranga ….
That which brings the highest happiness!!

Unlike most spam, I read it a few times. I wondered what in the world “Gouranga” was; my first guess was that it was a Japanese energy drink. However, unlike most spam, it had no link in it leading to a dodgy website waiting to cram my computer full of spyware. Were spammers getting sophisticated and trying to build brand awareness for the miracle drink / drug, Gouranga, with this mysterious message?

I did some research; apparently Gouranga is the nickname of the founder of the Hare Krishnas, the Hindu sect once famous for asking for donations at airports, and who are now better known for dancing around Leicester Square and chanting. So this message was religious spam, which is rare.

Rarer still, there is something to this “calling out Gouranga” business. Perhaps it’s my pronunciation of it, but saying it to my girlfriend made her smile. “Gouranga” is one of those words that’s inherently funny to say, like “kumquat”. It’s a function of language that certain syllables strung together do create amusement; Gouranga is definitely one of those. Does this mean that the Hare Krishnas sit around giving each other amusing names like their founder to engender laughter? If so, they are certainly more entertaining than I previously thought.

The spammer sending this particular message appears to have only one e-mail address, NitaiGouranga@aol.com. Unlike most spammers, this one actually replied to a query about his / her activities. Apparently his / her motivations are fairly simple:

I am just very enthusiastic person, who wants everybody to be happy.

If this an honest statement, this certainly was the first bit of spam I’ve ever received that was interested in happiness rather than quick profits. More importantly, they only sent it to me once. So hats off to the Hare Krishnas in this sense, in terms of world religions they may be far down the pecking order in size and wealth, but in terms of sending spam, they’re by far top of the class.