This article - a bona-fide, user-level Linux success story (that also gives deserved kudos to some very cool sysadmins) is on NewsForge and Slashdot so readers can print it out and hand it to their bosses, and taxpayers can send it their elected officials. In other words, this is an advocacy tool for *you* to use, not direct advocacy by *me*.
WSJ and NYT and other media have reporters that routinely read Slashdot and, increasingly, NewsForge (Hi Lee, John, and everyone!) and use us as a source of story leads. If they think saving tax money by using Linux will make a story worth writing, they'll write it.
Remember, the vast majority of my writing *must* go on NewsForge or Slashdot because I work for OSDN. Yes, it's as strange to me as it is to you, but they *pay* me for this stuff.:)
Now, about external advocacy...
If The Washington Post's tech editor (Hi Rob) or any other general-circulation publication's editors wanted me to write a freelance piece about how Largo's Linux use is saving tax money -- or any other Linux topic, I'd be happy to take on the assignment. I've written Linux advocacy pieces for both The Washington Post and Baltimore Sun in the past, you know.
I have also been doing more F2F Linux "outreach" advocacy lately, mostly speaking to non-Linux groups. This is the bulk of my public speaking these days, and is a major reason you don't see me speaking at Linux shows, which I feel have plenty of speakers already, most of whom know more than I do. My big speaking schtick is showing non-Linux people how easy it is to use Linux for common office tasks by plugging my (Linux) laptop into a digital projector and showing how to *do* instead of just talking.
Sadly, I can't do much outside writing between now and the end of September. I'm on a book deadline, and it's *not* a Linux book (title = "Build Profits Online") although it has a fair amount of Linux and Open Source advocacy in it. Once that manuscript is finished I'll have a little more time available to write "side" freelance stories about Linux (or whatever).
This is not a "special case," but one that could easily be duplicated in almost any government or business office environment that runs enough desktops to have its own sysadmins -- or at least a contract with a Linux-hip outside contractor -- to take care of the network.
My wife has worked in more than a few government and commercial office environments that ran Windows, and they *always* had a separate IT or network support staff to take care of the computers. She wasn't supposed to add software or even mess with the things at all. In fact, in her last "real" job, doing customer support for a pager company, the biggest office computer network problem they had was employees bringing in software (especially games) from home and installing them on their own. Often the self-installed software screwed things up like mad.
Running a client/server network completely eliminates this problem. It also makes updating productivity apps a lot easier for the sysadmins.
1) Largo has been running a Unix shop and thin client network for years. Only the switch to Linux and KDE 2.1.1 is new. I doubt that one or two sysadmins leaving would change things.
2) This is a done deal, not a "someday" or "we plan to" thing. I wandered around Largo city hall and talked to actual, everyday users.
3) I'd like to go back and speak to Dave and Mike in a year, yes -- to see how their plans to use OpenOffice pan out. The biggest holdup (as I wrote in the NewsForge story linked to above) is the lack of a good OpenOffice filter for WordPerfect files.
More accurately, jobs.osdn.com is a "partnership agreement" our marketing people got into with an existing jobs-type Web site operator, and we have nothing at all to do with its operation.
Seems to me Hemos covered this a long time ago... using his usual, well-known nom-de-net, just as I am using mine here.
For what it's worth, I've never thought, even for a second, of posting comments on Slashdot, NewsForge or any other OSDN site under any name other than my own.
Close, bubba, but not quite there. Some clever copyeditor somewhere had better write, "World Wide Web Worm Wars With White House" because it conforms to the old idea of what an ideal news story should contain: Five Ws and an H.*
My Dad (an engineer) gave me a Bamboo K&E he got as a gift from his grandfather (a machinist) in the 1930s. It was a lovely piece of work, but I preferred an aluminum Pickett with its yellow face. It was more... modern.
Sadly, I lost many of my better tools, including slide rules and great-grandfather's calipers and other measuring instruments, years ago. Good thing I have calculators and computers now.
And for those of you who are not familiar with such things, all you *really* need to navigate is a sextant, a watch or clock, a chart, and a copy of H.O. 249. A compass is nice, but not totally essential. Now let's see how many "kids today" know how to swing a compass, eh? (Or even what that means!)
A lot of what I know is now obsolete... how to prop-start a plane... how to balance dual, triple or quad carburetors... morse code... the list goes on, and it's a long one.
But I don't feel bad. One day the "kids today" will have their grandkids look up from their voice-operated or neurologically-jacked computers and say, "Grandpa, what's a keyboard?":)
Well, if you're an American citizen, you are part-owner of one of Adobe's biggest customers: your government.
Ever notice how many government documents -- federal, state and local -- are in.pdf format, created with Adobe products?
You may want to politely tell your employees (AKA government workers and elected representatives) that you would appreciate it if they stopped using *your* money to support Adobe.
If they'd do that,cool. But they won't. And Verizon's CDPD coverage maps are sort of... errr.. innacurate, and I never got even close to the promised 19.2 K even in the (few) areas where the service actually worked. I have a Novatel Merlin card, and when I called Verizon about my service problems they told me it was the problem, that I should blow $400+ on one from Sierra, that the network was fine. Then I called Novatel and I'm sure you know what *they* said.:)
I finally gave up on both Novatel and Verizon.
I guess I'll try Sprint PCS next. Supposedly the Kyocera phones they offer will handle straight AT commands through the serial port, so they ought to work with Linux fairly easily.
- Robin
Re:Radical actions ...
on
Eco-Terrorism
·
· Score: 3
"The Monkey Wrench Gang" was a fine book -- in which the main character drove a Jeep.
I drive one myself. A Cherokee.
Is my 1994 6-cylinder Jeep Cherokee an evil yuppie SUV, or is it a 4X4 I use to tow my sailboat, get to backwoods campgrounds, and (sometimes) to carry lots of stuff?
I bought my Jeep before the acronym "SUV" was in common use, and I plan to keep it until that fad is over. Y'all can debate the merits of your Hondas and Audis or Acuras or whatever. I'm sticking with my old blue box until I either can't get parts for it any more or my eyes get so bad that I can't drive safely.
No black eye for Exodus, please. Our router config was not a standard one they support. Exodus dude Derek Lam, especially, went way "above and beyond" this last week.
Read the Appeals Court's decision in ALS SCAN INC v REMARQ COMMUNITIES at http://laws.lp.findlaw.com/4th/001351.html and you'll see why they pulled those particular newsgroups.
If you get Web Hosting Magazine, I have an article in the next issue (July) about the DMCA's effects on ISPs and Hosting Services, and how they should handle DMCA complaints.
(No, I can't post a link to the story. It's a *print* magazine, and that issue isn't out yet. Sorry.)
Not necessarily. When my wife and I wanted to buy a house in Howard County (MD - 45 min. from DC), she started haunting Realtor.com, and she found the place we bought (and now live in) less than 4 hours after it was listed.
The agent said he had 5 inquiries from Realtor.com users before he had time to put up a "For Sale" sign.
Speed of posting seems to depend entirely on the agent or broker.
I don't happen to like Realtor.com much, myself. If you're not sure exactly sure what you want or exactly where you want to live, it's useless. It only works if your wants/needs are already well-defined.
But for our most recent purchase, it did its job -- which was to put us in touch with the agent who had the listing with as little fuss as possible.
I believe Alex Chiu is a living example of the sort of thing you can do on the Internet that you couldn't do without it. I believe Alex Chiu's insights on life, the universe, and everything are every bit as scientifically valid as those of the (late, lamented) Douglas Adams. I believe Alex Chiu has taken online self-promotion to a level few others have dared to try. I believe Alex Chiu has admirably thick skin; that whatever doubt you cast upon his statements, he will tell you that he is right and you are wrong.
Imagine a software company CEO with a vision and sense of his own rightness as strong as Alex's. Even if that person's company wrote pretty rinky-dink code, I'll bet it could end up dominating the desktop computer operating system market.
What I admire most about Alex Chiu is that sense of rightness. Most of us, confronted with rational evidence that we are wrong, change our minds. Not Alex! He plugs on no matter what you say about (or to) him.
Remember, you don't have to believe in christianity to enjoy Handel's Messiah, and as the old ad slogan put it, "You don't have to be Jewish to love Levy's Rye Bread."
Mad Magazine used to do these "out of context review quotes" as a regular feature in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Did Dave Berg write them? I can't remember.
Many years ago, when the world was young and there was no Internet, I wrote a short story called "Seven Days at Camp Cocaine."
It was a simple, 4000 word piece that made a simple point. It got published in a local (Baltimore) rag, and later ended up in a "literary" short story anthology, even though I had intended it to be nothing but a moment's reading pleasure with a small political message built into it. IMO, it was *not* literature.
Anyway, readers and critics (some with many academic-type letters after their names) went on and on about this or that "piece of imagery" and my "veiled symbolism" and so on.
We're talking about something I knocked out in an afternoon, probably after I'd had a fair amount to drink, and got maybe $400 or $500 for, tops; not great art, just a piece I cranked out to help pay the mortgage that month.
I swear, there must have been 40 *thousand* words written about "Seven Days in Camp Cocaine" by all those critics and professors and students. Most of them found all kinds of deepness in the story that I, the author, sure as hell didn't put in it.
"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."
- S. Freud
Sometimes a story is just a story and a movie is just a movie. Or perhaps I'm just too shallow to recognize Art when I see it, even if I'm the one who produced it. Geh.
- Robin 'roblimo' Miller
(The real Roblimo, UID #357, is sitting in the cabin of his sailboat, posting this through his Ricochet wireless modem, and may cast off and go for a short sail if the sky stays clear, having turned out over 2000 words of "pay copy" today -- which is more than enough, thank you.)
NSA is a DoD agency and has always been one. The standard "place of employment" spiel before they put up the signs along Rt. 295 and admitted the place existed was, "I work for the department of defense at Ft. Meade."
I don't know about now, but NSA paychecks and direct deposit paystubs used to be written by the Department of Agriculture, which confused many people. This was not because of any nefarious intent, but because USDA had a huge payroll system and did the payroll & checkwriting for a lot of other agencies in the DC area.
Intelligence people from all agencies who work "openly" outside the U.S. are typically attached to the local U.S. emabassy or consulate and are usually identified as State Department employees (and are often on "temporary duty" with State) so they can claim diplomatic immunity.
The general computing public in my neighborhood routinely loans and borrows software back and forth, same as garden & workshop tools.
I'm out of that cycle, since it's almost all Windows stuff getting swapped, but how the heck are Microsoft or Adobe going to keep people from being friendly, which is all the locals figure they're doing when they let a neighbor use their copy of whatever?
I can see it now... some sharpie compiles every possible (western scale) progression of six notes, copyrights and "publishes" that work, and sends an invoice for "royalties" to any company or prosperous-looking individual who is suspected of using any of the "tunes" as a cell phone ring -- or in any other form.
Sure, most people/companies would throw the notice in the nearest trash can, but who knows? If the amount requested wasn't huge, enough might pay it "to avoid litigation" that this could be a viable "business" model.
My wife is over 35, but she knows how to hook the S-Viceo output from either of our laptops to a VCR, either directly or through am S --> RCA adaptor.
This works with RealPlayer, too.
- Robin
Slashdot Mirror
Quickies are Rob Malda's personal schtick, and he's been busy with the 2.2 changeover and debugging. I miss quickies as much as you do, BTW.
- Robin
This article - a bona-fide, user-level Linux success story (that also gives deserved kudos to some very cool sysadmins) is on NewsForge and Slashdot so readers can print it out and hand it to their bosses, and taxpayers can send it their elected officials. In other words, this is an advocacy tool for *you* to use, not direct advocacy by *me*.
:)
WSJ and NYT and other media have reporters that routinely read Slashdot and, increasingly, NewsForge (Hi Lee, John, and everyone!) and use us as a source of story leads. If they think saving tax money by using Linux will make a story worth writing, they'll write it.
Remember, the vast majority of my writing *must* go on NewsForge or Slashdot because I work for OSDN. Yes, it's as strange to me as it is to you, but they *pay* me for this stuff.
Now, about external advocacy...
If The Washington Post's tech editor (Hi Rob) or any other general-circulation publication's editors wanted me to write a freelance piece about how Largo's Linux use is saving tax money -- or any other Linux topic, I'd be happy to take on the assignment. I've written Linux advocacy pieces for both The Washington Post and Baltimore Sun in the past, you know.
I have also been doing more F2F Linux "outreach" advocacy lately, mostly speaking to non-Linux groups. This is the bulk of my public speaking these days, and is a major reason you don't see me speaking at Linux shows, which I feel have plenty of speakers already, most of whom know more than I do. My big speaking schtick is showing non-Linux people how easy it is to use Linux for common office tasks by plugging my (Linux) laptop into a digital projector and showing how to *do* instead of just talking.
Sadly, I can't do much outside writing between now and the end of September. I'm on a book deadline, and it's *not* a Linux book (title = "Build Profits Online") although it has a fair amount of Linux and Open Source advocacy in it. Once that manuscript is finished I'll have a little more time available to write "side" freelance stories about Linux (or whatever).
Thanks for reading,
- Robin
This is not a "special case," but one that could easily be duplicated in almost any government or business office environment that runs enough desktops to have its own sysadmins -- or at least a contract with a Linux-hip outside contractor -- to take care of the network.
My wife has worked in more than a few government and commercial office environments that ran Windows, and they *always* had a separate IT or network support staff to take care of the computers. She wasn't supposed to add software or even mess with the things at all. In fact, in her last "real" job, doing customer support for a pager company, the biggest office computer network problem they had was employees bringing in software (especially games) from home and installing them on their own. Often the self-installed software screwed things up like mad.
Running a client/server network completely eliminates this problem. It also makes updating productivity apps a lot easier for the sysadmins.
- Robin
1) Largo has been running a Unix shop and thin client network for years. Only the switch to Linux and KDE 2.1.1 is new. I doubt that one or two sysadmins leaving would change things.
2) This is a done deal, not a "someday" or "we plan to" thing. I wandered around Largo city hall and talked to actual, everyday users.
3) I'd like to go back and speak to Dave and Mike in a year, yes -- to see how their plans to use OpenOffice pan out. The biggest holdup (as I wrote in the NewsForge story linked to above) is the lack of a good OpenOffice filter for WordPerfect files.
- Robin
I'll put my money on the U.S. "crack team" any day of the week. We're #1!!!
:)
- Robin
PS - how would they handle drug testing for the crack team?
More accurately, jobs.osdn.com is a "partnership agreement" our marketing people got into with an existing jobs-type Web site operator, and we have nothing at all to do with its operation.
Seems to me Hemos covered this a long time ago... using his usual, well-known nom-de-net, just as I am using mine here.
For what it's worth, I've never thought, even for a second, of posting comments on Slashdot, NewsForge or any other OSDN site under any name other than my own.
- Robin "Roblimo" Miller
Editor in Chief, OSDN
Close, bubba, but not quite there. Some clever copyeditor somewhere had better write, "World Wide Web Worm Wars With White House" because it conforms to the old idea of what an ideal news story should contain: Five Ws and an H.*
- Robin
*Who, what, when, where, why and how.
My Dad (an engineer) gave me a Bamboo K&E he got as a gift from his grandfather (a machinist) in the 1930s. It was a lovely piece of work, but I preferred an aluminum Pickett with its yellow face. It was more... modern.
:)
Sadly, I lost many of my better tools, including slide rules and great-grandfather's calipers and other measuring instruments, years ago. Good thing I have calculators and computers now.
And for those of you who are not familiar with such things, all you *really* need to navigate is a sextant, a watch or clock, a chart, and a copy of H.O. 249. A compass is nice, but not totally essential. Now let's see how many "kids today" know how to swing a compass, eh? (Or even what that means!)
A lot of what I know is now obsolete... how to prop-start a plane... how to balance dual, triple or quad carburetors... morse code... the list goes on, and it's a long one.
But I don't feel bad. One day the "kids today" will have their grandkids look up from their voice-operated or neurologically-jacked computers and say, "Grandpa, what's a keyboard?"
- Robin
Well, if you're an American citizen, you are part-owner of one of Adobe's biggest customers: your government.
.pdf format, created with Adobe products?
Ever notice how many government documents -- federal, state and local -- are in
You may want to politely tell your employees (AKA government workers and elected representatives) that you would appreciate it if they stopped using *your* money to support Adobe.
- Robin
If they'd do that,cool. But they won't. And Verizon's CDPD coverage maps are sort of... errr.. innacurate, and I never got even close to the promised 19.2 K even in the (few) areas where the service actually worked. I have a Novatel Merlin card, and when I called Verizon about my service problems they told me it was the problem, that I should blow $400+ on one from Sierra, that the network was fine. Then I called Novatel and I'm sure you know what *they* said. :)
I finally gave up on both Novatel and Verizon.
I guess I'll try Sprint PCS next. Supposedly the Kyocera phones they offer will handle straight AT commands through the serial port, so they ought to work with Linux fairly easily.
- Robin
I drive one myself. A Cherokee.
Is my 1994 6-cylinder Jeep Cherokee an evil yuppie SUV, or is it a 4X4 I use to tow my sailboat, get to backwoods campgrounds, and (sometimes) to carry lots of stuff?
I bought my Jeep before the acronym "SUV" was in common use, and I plan to keep it until that fad is over. Y'all can debate the merits of your Hondas and Audis or Acuras or whatever. I'm sticking with my old blue box until I either can't get parts for it any more or my eyes get so bad that I can't drive safely.
- Robin
No black eye for Exodus, please. Our router config was not a standard one they support. Exodus dude Derek Lam, especially, went way "above and beyond" this last week.
- Robin
If you get Web Hosting Magazine, I have an article in the next issue (July) about the DMCA's effects on ISPs and Hosting Services, and how they should handle DMCA complaints.
(No, I can't post a link to the story. It's a *print* magazine, and that issue isn't out yet. Sorry.)
- Robin
Not necessarily. When my wife and I wanted to buy a house in Howard County (MD - 45 min. from DC), she started haunting Realtor.com, and she found the place we bought (and now live in) less than 4 hours after it was listed.
The agent said he had 5 inquiries from Realtor.com users before he had time to put up a "For Sale" sign.
Speed of posting seems to depend entirely on the agent or broker.
I don't happen to like Realtor.com much, myself. If you're not sure exactly sure what you want or exactly where you want to live, it's useless. It only works if your wants/needs are already well-defined.
But for our most recent purchase, it did its job -- which was to put us in touch with the agent who had the listing with as little fuss as possible.
- Robin
Imagine a software company CEO with a vision and sense of his own rightness as strong as Alex's. Even if that person's company wrote pretty rinky-dink code, I'll bet it could end up dominating the desktop computer operating system market.
What I admire most about Alex Chiu is that sense of rightness. Most of us, confronted with rational evidence that we are wrong, change our minds. Not Alex! He plugs on no matter what you say about (or to) him.
Remember, you don't have to believe in christianity to enjoy Handel's Messiah, and as the old ad slogan put it, "You don't have to be Jewish to love Levy's Rye Bread."
- Robin
There is!
- Robin
Please follow the link I provided in the story to the full text of the complaint. That should answer your question.
- Robin
Mad Magazine used to do these "out of context review quotes" as a regular feature in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Did Dave Berg write them? I can't remember.
:)
Some things never change.
- Robin
Tell you what: if 10 Slashdot readers email me and request an interview with Alex Chiu, I'll ask him.
Who knows? Maybe he'll even send me a free pair of Immortality Rings!
- Robin
Many years ago, when the world was young and there was no Internet, I wrote a short story called "Seven Days at Camp Cocaine."
It was a simple, 4000 word piece that made a simple point. It got published in a local (Baltimore) rag, and later ended up in a "literary" short story anthology, even though I had intended it to be nothing but a moment's reading pleasure with a small political message built into it. IMO, it was *not* literature.
Anyway, readers and critics (some with many academic-type letters after their names) went on and on about this or that "piece of imagery" and my "veiled symbolism" and so on.
We're talking about something I knocked out in an afternoon, probably after I'd had a fair amount to drink, and got maybe $400 or $500 for, tops; not great art, just a piece I cranked out to help pay the mortgage that month.
I swear, there must have been 40 *thousand* words written about "Seven Days in Camp Cocaine" by all those critics and professors and students. Most of them found all kinds of deepness in the story that I, the author, sure as hell didn't put in it.
"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."
- S. Freud
Sometimes a story is just a story and a movie is just a movie. Or perhaps I'm just too shallow to recognize Art when I see it, even if I'm the one who produced it. Geh.
- Robin 'roblimo' Miller
(The real Roblimo, UID #357, is sitting in the cabin of his sailboat, posting this through his Ricochet wireless modem, and may cast off and go for a short sail if the sky stays clear, having turned out over 2000 words of "pay copy" today -- which is more than enough, thank you.)
NSA is a DoD agency and has always been one. The standard "place of employment" spiel before they put up the signs along Rt. 295 and admitted the place existed was, "I work for the department of defense at Ft. Meade."
I don't know about now, but NSA paychecks and direct deposit paystubs used to be written by the Department of Agriculture, which confused many people. This was not because of any nefarious intent, but because USDA had a huge payroll system and did the payroll & checkwriting for a lot of other agencies in the DC area.
Intelligence people from all agencies who work "openly" outside the U.S. are typically attached to the local U.S. emabassy or consulate and are usually identified as State Department employees (and are often on "temporary duty" with State) so they can claim diplomatic immunity.
- Robin
Link errors noted and fixed.
Thanks,
- Robin
The general computing public in my neighborhood routinely loans and borrows software back and forth, same as garden & workshop tools.
I'm out of that cycle, since it's almost all Windows stuff getting swapped, but how the heck are Microsoft or Adobe going to keep people from being friendly, which is all the locals figure they're doing when they let a neighbor use their copy of whatever?
- Robin
I can see it now... some sharpie compiles every possible (western scale) progression of six notes, copyrights and "publishes" that work, and sends an invoice for "royalties" to any company or prosperous-looking individual who is suspected of using any of the "tunes" as a cell phone ring -- or in any other form.
Sure, most people/companies would throw the notice in the nearest trash can, but who knows? If the amount requested wasn't huge, enough might pay it "to avoid litigation" that this could be a viable "business" model.
Isn't the 21st Century fun?
- Robin
My wife is over 35, but she knows how to hook the S-Viceo output from either of our laptops to a VCR, either directly or through am S --> RCA adaptor. This works with RealPlayer, too. - Robin