The magic 1st-cheque mark is approaching kind of like a curve approaches a line it never touches. I seem to recall this is something to do with Limits, but actually never even studied Calculus at all and know that has something to do with it… I seem to recall functions made sense only because I already understood them in the context of programming random stuff… maybe Adsense can teach me maths!

Which, I’ve decided, is fine, because I’ve got a web and email address on the piece of paper, and for the number of contacts this so-called “survey” seeds I’m praying it’ll be completely worth it, even if no-one bothers filling in the survey properly. Really, $40 (or however much actual cost per page is here) is pretty good if I only get 10 quality leads on people who are desparately keen to use something like this… and can wait a few months.

I mention that as trouble appears to be brewing on the home front re: the waiting part… :| People are enthusiastic but in a “let’s grab a generic CMS and mix it up with Blogger and Google Groups and it’ll rock” kind of way. Which is fine for all of about six months, then you’ve gotta do it all over again because 1 of 3 stops working for whatever reason. And scalability issues. Grr… anyway. I thought we’d been through all this already with our abortive Yahoo! Calendar attempts of 18 months ago. Apparently not.

So… please be praying for wisdom and patience around that particular issue. And especially that I’d be loving, because right now I’m in a position where I could clobber people with technical ramblings until they agree with me (read: relent), or simply go and change it as I think it should be… but doing either of those things is obviously unproductive. Again, prayer for wisdom is very welcome!

Prayer is also sought for tomorrow — for the Youth for Christ programme running at St Andrews all day, and then for me at the Connecting in a world of change conference as I present in my little 2.20 to 2.30 timeslot. Which is plenty of time for a geek like me — I actually do enjoy public speaking, but that doesn’t mean I’m much good at it!

I’ve also got to get a site up for CYIADA, because I decided that if I stuck it on print materials and did 130 copies of it, then the potential for embarrasment should be sufficient motivator to make me move quickly! Hehe. Really must get one of the IT guys here to setup hosting first thing tomorrow… I figure it’s okay if it’s not working straight away, because I can say it’s just been put up and there’ll be something there in the next couple of days.

In other domain-related news I also picked up josh.st. So you should be able to get to this site via that funky URL in a few hours once DNS pushes through (the nameservers have switched, finally — .st’s NIC took forever with that — but obviously it’s still got to propagate). I know I’m always saying this but there’s a new design on its way. I’ve got three sites in the works at the minute, so if it doesn’t come in a hurry don’t be too surprised. I doubt anyone is anymore, though!

So if you can’t read this message blame a three-letter-acronym (DNS) being attacked by a four-letter-acronym (DDoS), both of which will be understood only by a small fraction of you, I guess!

Geek geek geek.

Erin’s farewell party was last night in like… Hobart or something… so a bunch of us drove down there and it was good. Or, I drove down with lots of passengers and it was a good night/trip, once we found the river under the bridge in Hobbitsville. Thanks Selo ;-) I only discovered yesterday that driving actually can be tiring. Or draining, one of the two. Anyway, enough about driving. I’d post photos but

a) It’d be painfully slow to upload, and;
b) … nope, that’s about all the reason I’ve got.

It’ll happen April 1. No that’s not an April Fools’ joke. Wow it’s April already. Uni calendars suck/take getting used to. I totally don’t know what I’m doing with my life/when anymore. No diary can save me. It’s odd… I love paper but need my wall calendar and my uni diary and my home Exchange and work Exchange to all magically sync with one another. Guess it’s time to buy a cheap Palm Zire… Doh. Tempting, though. It’d save carrying lots of books for the bigger days at uni!

Stream-of-consciousness blog posts are fun. I’m going Zire shopping tomorrow I think. Well, online at least. After I fail my Greek test, and after I get home from work. We’ve got a new guy coming in tomorrow called Niels (I think? Dunno about spelling… and I have a brother called Neil so it’s not that name…) so the Australian:German ratio of our office is shifting more in favour of the Germans again. Heh. In other exciting-work-related news that probably means nothing to anyone who hasn’t seen the office, everything’s been re-arranged over the weekend. So I’m going to go in on Monday afternoon and my PC will have moved again. I’ve seriously had… one, two.… two and a half different desks/desk locations since I started last December! (Or was it November?) Change is good fun.

I haven’t posted on τρανσλιτερατιον this week, have I? Probably not. Badness. I am constantly thinking about that stupid subject, it’s just that real work for it eludes me. Mark quipped this evening that he shouldn’t have done two subjects in a semester he actually wanted to do well in. I think I find myself agreeing! Hehe. I’m really excited about our first English assessment, even if it is a paltry 1000 words and so on. Just to write academically again. And I know the HSC year wasn’t about that but I tried to make it that anyway … hence my English Advanced teacher saying to me she didn’t think I could get a band 6. A comment on arrogance, perhaps, but I love that subject too much to just let things go and regurgitate. Unlike Emily I don’t just enjoy the idea of languages… they’re genuinely interesting (irrespective of whether or not I actually study them — I read this great bi-lingual English/Spanish culture blog that’s pretty random but just occasionally has absolute gems of information/new perspectives) in their complexities, irrationalities, quirks, and associated cultures. Intertexuality is great, too.

Tonight in church we were doing the last bit of Mark chapter 7, and there’s this bit that says “He looked up to heaven and with a deep sigh said to him “Ephphatha” (which means, “Be opened!”).” — and I couldn’t help but wonder “why not translate that word?”. Turns out it actually says ο εστιν διανοιχθητι, which apparently translates as “which is “Be opened!”” or similar. εφφαθα is actually an Aramaic word (I don’t know what characters Aramaic uses, even, let alone how to transliterate that back!) that just happened to be rendered in Greek in the original. So we’re actually getting the undoctored version in the Bible, even though it’d be simpler to translate “ephphatha” as “be opened!” and just skip that step. Good stuff.

Speaking of all that Greek, I should go sleep so I have time tomorrow to learn three weeks’ worth of vocab for a test at midday. Yay.

*files post under category “Everything”*

It is a truth universally acknowledged… that the absence of a fair-use provision in Australian copyright law is simply an oversight on the part of legislators. (Apologies to Austen fans :P)

What if it’s not?

There is, now, what Paul Sheehan termed “little squares of light”, signifying connectivity in an “advanced, ironic, post-ethnic polyglot societ[y]”. Before that? The “Dark Age” (also Sheehan). It did exist. There was a time before computers and multimedia were intrinsically connected (depending on your definition of multimedia–multimodal media is perhaps more apt). There was, indeed, a time before multimedia existed — though we can, perhaps, trace its origins to Wagner’s 1849 essay, “The Artwork of the Future” and the notion of Gesamtkunstwerk — which, in turn, traces back to Greek drama, but no matter!

Yet irrespective of when this arose, legislators are meant to have acknowledged the imminent rise of the copyright-violating, citizen-empowering, content-producer-collaboration–dictat at the hands of the web. We’re expecting the wrong thing. Media has progressed, the law hasn’t. Yet.

But what if it doesn’t? Does this matter? Speaking to an influential podcast-media personality yesterday afternoon, it became clear that there had emerged between citizen media and conventional mechanisms a fissure that certain people were very reluctant to bridge. Suspicion exists between the two ‘industries’ (though it was suggested that an ‘industry’ cannot exist until someone is making money: perhaps not the case with citizen media, overblown acquisitions aside) where ‘citizen media’ is concerned that any partnerships with ‘conventional media’ will stifle innovation. Clearly, this is wrong, and ignores the ‘citizen’ part of ‘citizen media’: any partnership cannot exist without the ‘citizen’ remaining, thus changing conventional media. And if the ‘citizen’ component is dissolved, it becomes a meaningless acquisition as ‘media’ already exists, and ‘citizen media’ without the ‘citizen’ has no impetus whatsoever.

However, that aside, this (perhaps mutual) hostility raises interesting notions.

If we consider the two to exist in entirely distinct and disparate spheres, then new possibilities arise. We accept that citing and re-using ‘mass media’ material in new creations is, for a time, impossible. We accept that a ‘normalisation’ is taking place, to cite the much-lauded ‘village square’ concept of communal media: that we are returning to a ‘normal’ state, and that broadcast top-down media was a temporary hiccup in the state of human being. The difference, then, is that we now exist in a globalised state where those with whom we communicate (or, share media/experience) is not limited by geography… but remains limited in scope (sensual experience, for example, is rather inhibited by the tyranny of distance).

In two hundred years, assuming mass media assimilated back into ‘normality’ today, all copyright would have expired and all work could be cited, quoted, re-used and abused as people willed it. There is clearly no great possibility of this happening: acknowledged even by the mass-media-hostile personality interviewed. Should we care? Maybe. If there is material worth reproducing, that is.

The web is a temporal media, still. Never before have such vast volumes of information been so volatile, in part because such vast volumes of information have never been so accessible (in an entirely un-web-standards-related sense). Hence, it is possible that the alleviation of this access will hurt more than it would had we not known what was possible. The nature of this detachment from the web isn’t something to be discussed here — suffice to say, global energy crisis, war, censorship (because the web remains relatively dependent on a small number of servers — DNS root servers particularly) and a variety of other factors could all play a part. But what would this mean?

Earlier, I alluded to the ‘globalised village’ concept, and how that, in some senses (no pun intended), fails. What we are now seeing is a series of online ‘communities’ existing in parallel, with very occasional (but also very complex) perpendicular relationships. There is no global village. There are a series of global communities, with which people can choose to participate and engage to whatever extent they deem desirable. A series of factors aside from the web and MSM have also led to the decline of the physical ‘village’ environment — urban sprawl, globalisation in a physical sense (highly mobile populations, etcetera) and the like are examples of such — but there is something wrong with an entirely directed, specific, no-overlap environment. Ben remarked a day or two ago that it’s intriguing his three best friends all have an affinity for English (and two of those teaching it), whilst he is indifferent about the language, as about teaching (though remarked it is ‘fun’ where maths is concerned!).

Rarely, in Internet-based communities, have I seen someone engage with people outside of their own area of principle interest. Web sites work like that. They are sites with a purpose: and, if they do not have a purpose, the traffic they attract is often sporadic and undirected. Even this blog has a purpose — it must, to have attracted (and retained) the attention of an American with an interest in web publishing. Once attention is engaged on one front, it is possible to explore others — it’s possible that people with an interest in web publishing and accessibility will read this post simply because it popped up in their feed reader and looked vaguely interesting (though length is doubtless a deterrent!). Back to the term ‘site’ — clearly, this word’s etymology ensures it cannot be divorced from its real-world meaning.

People do not simply enter a building for no reason. This parallel fails to some extent as the power of search-engines come into the equation — but, remember, search engines must also discover a ‘site’ at some point (impossible without incoming links). Which brings us back to the parallel-with-occasional-perpendicular-bridges image (note, parallel cannot mean linear because of the nature of hyperlinks. Perhaps I speak of parallel Möbius strips?)

Irrespective of the mechanisms for web-based exploration, web media and mainstream media both fail to serve an encompassing purpose of human interaction. Copyright makes no difference to this. Observe how distracted this post is. Observe how I return to the topic of copyright harshly, how it does not link to the important defining qualities of human interaction (which, it must be said, the web in part facilitates). This was both intentional and unavoidable: there is no better link. Copyright doesn’t matter, and previously created content under copyright does not matter. Eventually, copyright will dissolve, and a harmonisation between formally detached publishing mechanisms (I have decided that is all the difference is) will come about. People will continue to express themselves, drawing on the content of their time — ideas are aside from copyright — whilst, perhaps, drifting apart from this new media and back into the village…

If you’re seeing a boring directory listing, wait another hour or five til the DNS change has propagated… we changed nameservers last night, Sydney time, so it should be through soon.

Be the first to comment on it over at the cat-scan blog!

N.B. If you haven’t got working DNS yet, try http://209.59.176.82/~catscan/blog/ and http://209.59.176.82/~catscan/. Links will be broken using this method.

I’m using a Dynamic DNS service instead of just setting up an A record (much simpler, plus that would mean I could have a catchall on the domain… my current DNS host — also my registrar, Joker.com — doesn’t like wildcard CNAME records, though) because, theoretically, my plan only has a dynamic IP address prone to changing at any given moment. Dynamic DNS services really should only be used by people with dynamic IP addresses, for a number of reasons… the most obvious one being that they are designed to change, and expire if you don’t let them. (At least with DynDNS, which is pretty excellent for the price… free.)

With this in mind, I received this message today:

A hostname you have registered with Dynamic Network Services at DynDNS, sn0239410.dnsalias.net, with current IP address 60.225.85.25, will expire in the next 5 days. This expiration is due to an automatic timeout; your host has not been updated for 30 days, and hosts are removed after not being updated for 35 days. This is our policy to prevent a stagnant DNS system. Users with static IP addresses can use the Static DNS system, which does not have this timeout.

There’s more, I just can’t be bothered repeating it here.

That’s the fourth time I’ve read that paragraph in separate messages. That exact paragraph. Yeah, not even the IP changed.

To give that some time scale, see the quoted portion above: “hosts are removed after not being updated for 35 days”. I’ve manually touched my subdomain’s record once every 35 days or thereabouts for the last four months. Before that, the same situation existed, but then only for three months. Before that? Two. (And before that was iiNet, back in the day, and that doesn’t really bear commenting… every time your modem disconnected you’d get a new IP, and sometimes more often! Though it seems to have improved since…)

Seems to me as though Telstra is slowly and quietly making its dynamic IPs more and more static as broadband adoption picks up. So, Telstra, when are you giving us (mere plebs) IPv6?

The DNS change should have propagated most places now — cat-man.homeip.net will definitely be working, even if cat-man.joahua.com isn’t yet.

Regarding Minesweeper:

Ben: best time for expert is something like 183
Josh: i dont know if i’ve ever beat it, actually
Josh: hehe
Josh: well
Josh: im sure i have a few times
Josh: but i never pay any attention to how LONG
Josh: coz its always a distraction
Josh: not an extreme sport
Josh: …or something
Ben: hey minesweeper SO is a sport

Regarding Telstra’s crappy DNS:

Ben: use iinets:P
Josh: yeah i was, but that was just as slow… something about something? i dont know, it still DOWNLOADS fast, just takes ages to RESOLVE anything :/
Ben: sucks to be you trying to resolve?
Josh: hehe, guess so :p
Josh: but that’s okay
Josh: because it’s the journey, not the resolution, which matters
Josh: ;)
Ben: so exactly how many hops is it between your modem and the telstra DNS? explain the language forms and features (in binary) used and how they effect the responder (your home computer) as it goes about its trip.

What has the Board of Studies done to us?

Lycos spokesperson, Kay Oberbeck, is quoted as saying that “the [Make Love not Spam] campaign was only meant to be temporary”, it’s primary goals being to spark discussion and raise awareness — something which it has unquestionably achieved, perhaps in a realm far greater than that of just unsolicited spam marketing (I refuse to use euphemisms here — spam is unsolicited, intrusive, trespassing, unrequested and undesireable — not “direct marketing”). The campaign has raised questions regarding the state of regulation of the Internet, both in terms of anti-spam legislation, and the legality of “electronic sit-in” tactics, up to and including the use of distributed (collaborative) attacks on a centralised point.

Arguments over the semantics of what exactly constitutes a DDoS attack have also arisen as a result of this campaign: Whilst it’s generally accepted that this is indeed a distributed attack, the curious nature of the application, in that it attempts to raise the costs of spamming but not altogether “deny service”, coupled with the fact that participation in this campaign is user-driven (by way of active participatory choice), mean that this cannot be likened to virus-driven DDoS attacks seen in recent times, such as those upon The SCO Group’s website.

Not only is the basic question of what constitutes a (D)DoS attack raised, but also the question of what, exactly, is required for this attack to be considered “distributed”. Legally speaking, the attack has not been launched from any one co-ordinating point. The software distribution point and directory listing points were centralised, however these were not responsible for the independent actions of over 100,000 users^[1], who downloaded the software, and ran it.

Collaborative attacks such as this make litigation remarkably difficult, considering the very distributed participation — how can Lycos be sued for something they didn’t do? And, even if they could be sued for “something” they didn’t do, is it even legitimate to prosecute over a “denial of service” attack such as this? Some have commented that by connecting a computer to the Internet, you accept the possibility of such attacks implicitly — admittedly, this was posted on Slashdot, a (slightly more Left) IT news source, but the point bears consideration.

Was the campaign a “good” thing? In accordance with the stated goals presented to the world in hindsight, yes. Having said that, however, Lycos appear to have been standing on defensive footing for much of this campaign, denying events which the rest of the world seem to have witnessed, beyond most reasonable doubt (speaking specifically of the denial of the compromise of their website, either by a direct hacking, or DNS poisoning). Starring, the agency responsible for developing the Spray website (an arm of Lycos) and the Make LOVE not SPAM campaign, maintains the intention of the campaign is to increase the costs involved with SPAM advertising (as well as awareness raising and a promotional utility for Spray mail), something which everyone took as implicit, but (so far as I’ve seen) Lycos hasn’t explicitly stated^[2].

So what’d they do wrong, from a constructive perspective? Well, it was of a closed nature, for one. Lycos copped a surprising amount of criticism for this one from the mainstream media, specifically as “independent verification” of the nature of sources was unable to be performed — fears that the lists of offenders were corrupted remained unresolved, as public access to this information was not readily available ^[3]. If Lycos’s present stance on the project is legitimate, then the project rather deliberately remained closed in nature — if it were open, they would have an AOL-style Gnutella on their hands (admittedly, the situation of recall is remarkably similar, but the project hasn’t been able to get out of control due to a lack of publically available source code), arguably a worse corporate nightmare than the legal mess in which Lycos may find themselves entangled.

An open project would have allowed the project a greater chance of success, in that criticism pertaining to the validity of targets would be quelled, and even an official end to the project would likely permit a host of child-projects, all with the same goals in mind. The disadvantage to this, of course, is that community-powered vigilantism is far more susceptible to dubious attacks on innocent websites, due to it’s (comparatively) unregulated nature (if Lycos’s claims regarding the checking process are to be believed).

Will this spurn a host of similar projects? Probably. Such projects already exist, on a smaller scope — one project targetting Nigerian scammers is already in place — however none of them have enjoyed such widespread media attention as MLNS has from conventional press. Lycos’s position as a dominant European (and, to a lesser extent, American) portal has meant that their actions are far more closely scrutinised than those of small community bodies. Having said that, the popularity of peer-to-peer file-sharing applications didn’t come about as a result of mass media propagation, but rather through grassroots communication between peers, recommending the software to others.

Information Technology publications (both physical and electronic) played a part in making early adopters aware of these technologies, however the bulk of the work may be attributed to communities online who spread awareness of this software on a peer-based level. This technology has similar potential, on a far greater scale — it’s media exposure at launch was massive, and whilst it was rapidly removed (or censored), the amount of interest it generated offers projects which adopt a similar vein in the future a greater chance of success.

From a media perspective, future projects such as this will attract a mention, if only because of their similarity to this high-profile one. The ramifications of MLNS are great in scope; arguably, greater than Lycos have foreseen in the launch of this. Ultimately, this project demonstrates the power of the Internet as a tool for activism and collaborative empowerment — the true impact of these is something for which the world must wait and watch.

Notes

1. Actual downloads may far exceed this figure, given the rapid propagation of mirrors of this software, and the (highly questionable) actions of some backbone providers in blocking the official website, MakeLoveNotSpam.com — which raises a whole new set of questions pertaining to digital activism, if the providers to this form of self-enforcing electronic democracy are actively denying access to “questionable” facilities!
2. I’m quite open to being proved wrong on this point: so far as I can see, they haven’t stated that — I’ve been sifting through a decent amount of news material on the subject, but it’s more than possible that I simply missed it. If you feel otherwise, feel free to leave a comment/send me an email.
3. Admittedly, it was possible to access http://backend.makelovenotspam.com/xml/ for the data, but this wasn’t a highly publicised fact, and the methods by which this data was attained and verified remain shrouded in doubt.

I got a letter in my physical mailbox today, from an organisation called the “Domain Registry of America”, about a domain I’m the administrative contact on (well, I’m also the technical and billing contact, but what the heck). I’d never had anything to do with them before, so I assume they pulled my details from the DNS record on the domain of a client.

I’m pretty impressed. They sent me physical mail, and it wasn’t even a scam. This, from a dot com company. R.E.S.P.E.C.T. I honestly don’t mind real world spam. It’s reassuring to know there’s a tangible cost to the people sending it, even if it means trees are getting lopped down from old growth forests. I can pretend it’s recycled if I want, anyway.

It was letting me know the domain expires in March next year (talk about forward notice, hey?!), and was offering me renewal with them, instead of my current registrar for that domain. Yeah, it’s just a domain transfer form, which they mailed out. The suggestion is that if I switch to them I’ll be paying less than I am with my current registrar, which is blatantly untrue — their rates listed here are $AU38 per year ($US25), whilst I get domains with my current registrar for $US12 each ($AU16). Still, there was an envelope enclosed, and a form I could fill out to change domain providers, as well as purchase the .org and .biz namespace of the same name.

They have a Melbourne office, and the whole thing looks quite legitimate… I’m tempted to send them a polite reply informing them that my current registrar is cheaper, and they’re most welcome to try and match pricing and ancillary services if they wish. Maybe.

It’s moments like these when I’m glad clients aren’t the administrative/billing contacts for their own domains. This thing, although it says “This notice is not a bill” in the 3rd paragraph, reads awfully like a renewal form (the header reads “Domain Name Expiration Notice”) — I can quite easily see someone who doesn’t know or remember who their registrar is simply processing payment for it and etting on with their life: not a problem in itself, but for the fact that there’d be an upset client a few months later, when their DNS services are suddenly borked and they don’t know why… neither would I, and logging into the registrar’s panel wouldn’t help, as the domain would no longer be with them!

Aside from that slightly scary aspect, I haven’t got any real problem with this kind of attempted poaching… I am, however, somewhat curious as to whether anyone else has experienced this kind of mail before. If you’ve got a domain name and have or haven’t received this type of mail before, post a comment or something.

Hmm. Aside from that, of course, other things have been happening. Yesterday was my brother’s 8th birthday — I would say happy birthday, but he doesn’t read this, so there we go. :P We went out to Juanita’s, a great Mexican restaruant in Kensington, and… umm… ate food. As you do.

The rest yesterday was spent on a variety of things, from frantically editing CSS and the occasional graphic (all visual design work, thankfully — I’ve decided that I shouldn’t make a habit of programming, as it’s something I regularly fall flat on my face trying!) for an upcoming website, to reading Henrik Ibsen’s 1877 play, A Doll’s House.

I’m struggling to decide which was more enjoyable, too… this website features some rather well implemented gimmicky elements of design, and it’s immensely satisfying to watch come together, from paper mockup to digital reality (haha, I’d never noticed the irony in that before — funny how us web people turn even the concept of “reality” itself on its head, hey?). At the same time, A Doll’s House was an excellent play. I think a comparison of which is more “enjoyable” is truistic, because the play is certainly not enjoyable, even if it was incredibly worthwhile reading.

The website is currently chock-full of proprietry –moz CSS extensions, which is part of a new strategy I’m trying to cut development time. Basically, the thought behind it goes “Josh sucks when working with the GIMP”, so the idea is I use Mozilla controls to achieve visually what I want in an electronic form, such that what I wish to achieve is evident on screen already, and then simply go about converting that to a static graphical form. Of particular use, at least for what I’d envisaged for this design, is the Opacity property… it’s not a perfect representation of what I’ll end up with, as it effects the contents of the element it’s applied to (i.e. not JUST the background of an element), but it’s close enough for all intents and purposes.

Further into this website, I’ll post estimates as to just how much time this has saved… it’s something of an intangible, but hey, you get that.

Today’s the last day of my holidays! Ahhhhh! This has honestly been one of the shorter holiday periods of my life… ah well. I think I’m going to go and buy some more film and RAM for this computer today… I’m sick of seeing it 30% into swap, and physical usage sitting at 98%!

P.S. Mandy Moore’s song “Only Hope” is suprisingly good — I’d written her off as another pop queen, but I’d cite that song as proof she can sing!

I spent last night @ the Cat’s residence (a.k.a. the Cat-man) watching a movie called “The Whole Nine Yards”.  Hehe, I watched TV!  Wow!

Also been spending time burning up the bandwidth as much as possible streaming stuff, especially off TheBasement.  Any particular reason?  Nope.  I’ve decided that, just like the rest of iiNet apparently sees a need to, I must download as much as possible just beacuse I’m allocated ridiculous amounts of quota by my… generous ISP.  Who, just for the record, currently have a distinct lack of functioning international links, whilst WestNet, Pacific, Telstra (who is being blamed for the outage) and miscellaneous other ISP’s are functioning perfectly (how do I know this?  Hmm.  I’m listening to streaming music live from the US via a Pacific relay, surfing the internet using a Telstra proxy, resolving hosts using a TPG DNS server (iiNets went out, again), and Whirlpool reports WestNet as working fine.)

To be fair, iiNet have been decent for the last month or three, but still… UNCOOL.

I’ve been playing around with domains and forests (mmm trees) today. Connecting domain servers to different computers all talking to one central DNS box. Oh my how I love windows. Everything just works. Really I love windows. I don’t care what anyone else says. I find it stable, fast and easy to use. Isn’t that what computers are meant to be like? I also spent a far bit of time on a 12″ iBook with OSX 10.3.x very nice too. I like these operating systems because they have one company behind them pushing them in one direction, not some linux distro which has been split so many times it isn’t funny, or a technology release gone wrong (fedora anyone?). You need direction when building an operating system and that is what Microsoft and Apple both do. Great job guys.

Linux, whilst not guided in the same unilateral manner as both OS X and Windows, is still capable of consistent development values and policies allowing for a highly efficient, scalable and usable platform.  Linux on the desktop has not yet reached the maturity of even Windows (let alone the sophistication of OS X), a claim which I am yet to see contested.  Development policies resulting from Open Source are, by their very nature, open.  This does not REQUIRE fragmentation such as that which was described, although this is often a result.

The lack of control by a monolithic entity over a product permits innovation in the marketplace, resulting in technological advancement for the greater benefit of the entire community, not the bottom-line of a TNC software monopoly.  Not that TNC monopolies are bad — well, they are, but that isn’t the issue being discussed here.  TNC monopolies stifle innovation, and subject users to the decisions made by aforementioned monopoly — users have no choice, at this point, but to wait for the situation to change, or to switch platforms.

I can’t help but notice a striking parallel between Roman Catholicism and closed-source monopolist-software vendors.  My reasoning is a little abstract, so bare with me, here.  Both enjoy monolithic, absolute control over those within their respective structures — this, arguably, is a good thing — people with the knowledge are making decisions for the greater good of the organisation as a whole.

But what if those with knowledge aren’t making the correct decisions?  Or are pursuing a path which allows users no input or control over that which they are subject to (i.e. their belief system, being dictated by the Pope, or their software environment, being dictated by Microsoft)… are users supposed accept this path as being right, going with what those with knowledge tell them, or is there room for individual choice, even if this means questioning the entity, as Martin Luther did?

Open-Source, like the Protestant movement, does not require users follow an established structure.  To an extent, it allows users to choose for themselves — any apparent church structure within whatever denomination shouldn’t have the power to dictate the beliefs of individuals who profess that faith (as conservative Roman Catholics would believe); matters of faith are individual, as are all beliefs (n.b. this does not make individual beliefs CORRECT).

Because of this inherent propensity for deviation and fragmentation to occur, it has — not all people will see eye-to-eye on all things, and a framework in which people are free to make up their own mind does result in fragmentation.  Not always for the better.

Likewise, the Open-Source community allows for fragmentation to occur.  This is ideal for individuals, although not always for the community as a whole — this is where product vendors come in.

A key example, most relevant given comments made regarding Fedora Core 2, is that of RedHat.  They are an OS application vendor, with strong Open-Source ties, specifically in their financial and developmental support of the Fedora project.  Fedora exists both to serve the Open-Source community as a whole, as well as provide an environment in which development and testing may occur for the refinement of RedHats’ commercial-grade/Enterprise offerings.

In this, RedHat operates as an integrator.  Whilst the quality of freely (as in beer/speech/whatever else) available software released by the Fedora project may be of dubious quality at various stages of development, RedHat, operating as a commercial software solutions development organisation, ensures that the quality of their enterprise-grade offerings do not suffer.

Windows just works?  Often… although I would venture that in terms of ALL server related tasks, a solution from one proven OSS vendor would prove just as adequate.  Worried about interoperability?  That is a separate concern — remember, Windows doesn’t have a monopoly on the server market, and it is far from interoperable with *nix platforms.

Windows just works on the desktop?  Sure, in between the spyware and malware and virus outbreaks and other various system compromises.  I spent an hour today trying to get crap off a computer used by my brothers.  Spybot, AdAware — latest definitions, multiple scans, nothing resolved.  I spent the remaining 20 minutes manually hacking things down, thinking “this wouldn’t happen if this computer were running Linux”.

And it wouldn’t have.  I was (and am) sorely tempted to install a locked-down heavily customised version of Fedora (heh, Core 1, because 2 sucks, apparently ;)) on there, with Mozilla, aMSN and OpenOffice, and leave home indefinitely.  They would be perfectly fine until it ran out of disc space.

If they wish to play games?  Then why are they still using a Pentium 166 (OC’d to 200) with 48MB of RAM?  That doesn’t appear to be a consideration from where I am sitting.

What a shame, they won’t be able to install any software they want.  No dialers for you, I’m sorry.

I’m a tad more irritated about it than I should be, perhaps, but really, given the amount of bandwidth that much extra name resolution requires, it’s somewhat insignificant next to a school full of students randomly downloading crap from all over the place.  Or so you would think.  Or I would think.  Or something.