Xarg blog Archive

Doc Searls has a nice article at Linux Journal, Tale of Two Stories, about press coverage of Google and asks "What does coverage of Google's success tell us about what's really going on with Linux?

Google has achieved maximum Linux irony by becoming the only commercial enterprise to leverage enormous quantities of free software (10,000 Linux servers at last count) into de facto web infrastructure: private enterprise as public utility.

The short answer is that using linux isn't news anymore, it just works.

I finished the forums performance tuning writeup I did a couple months ago and fixed the last big problem which was the message delete function.

Actually spending more time working with PostgreSQL made me like it more (which is the opposite of the what I always came away with from my Oracle tuning experiences). I think it's often more pleasant to work with open source software since so much of the development is driven by what bothers individual developers. There is a lot less marketing and features for feature's sake. On the other hand, in the case of PostgreSQL it's also not had to face the demands of terabyte+ data warehouses and really demanding transactional environments since so few of the contributors are confronted by those problems. I think it will get there though -- sooner rather than later is my guess as well (since there are people now trying to use Postgres for such things).

This time someone wants to fix my design:

I have recently founded your website. Design is bad. We are promoting new great resource of website templates www.designgalaxy.net . Use my templates to build good website.

They say they partner with flamingtext.com and I think I definitely should take them up on it. There is a decided lack of flaming text on my site!

I got an email from some firm saying

We are the UK's experts in Open Source and would value the opportunity of understanding how we can help you take full advantage of Linux. Give us the opportunity to discuss your current IT infrastructure with you and we will provide FREE OF CHARGE a full and comprehensive scope showing where Linux could be used to improve your system and massively reduce your licensing costs.

Of course the mail headers included

X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2800.1106
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1106

I found a bunch of curious 404 errors in the server log like this:

194.130.56.116 - - [17/Jan/2003:11:33:36 -0500] "GET /photos/real.css HTTP/1.1" 404 549 "" \
  "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows NT 4.0)"

All gets for real.css from IE and always with an empty referer. The only place I include this css file is in /css/main.css where I do an @import url("real.css"); which I would assume would always look for the file in base directory of /css/. Unfortunately IE has different ideas here. I would guess it probably happens when printing given how often it happens and which pages it shows up on. It happens to people who are actively viewing pages and not coming back to the site after having quit and restarted the browser. I just changed the import to use the full path but once again I am annoyed to be doing something stupid to work around a bug in IE.

Nothing but Troubling News From the World of Publishing by Verlyn Klinkenborg in the NY Times:

If there's such a thing as foolish cynicism, that is what the corporate overseers of the once-independent publishing houses are displaying. As long as their main task is satisfying shareholders instead of book buyers, the industry is going to keep digging its own grave, the way the music business has.

and this from Textism on Pinguin Book's hiring of Jan Tschichold:

If ever there was an object lesson for ye somewhat mighty producers of cultural commodities, it is right there in Allen Lane’s decision to find someone who genuinely and obsessively knew what he was doing (as opposed, say, to someone who talked flash crap) award him total authority, and then keep capable people close at hand to follow the lead, indefinitely.

Two days ago, the typesetting staff of Penguin Books Ltd, London, were informed of the company’s intention to make their positions redundant.

Ultimately the internet will increase the scope of what people read, watch, and listen to. The content industries quest for larger margins and more consistent profitability (in general by aggressively promoting particular artists or authors) runs counter to this and is likely ultimately to fail. At least I hope it does. This blossoming of opportunity for lesser known artists and writers might be bad for the shareholders but its good for the artists and its good for the public and is long overdue.