"I'm the Art King of Yale,
  I'm the artsy-fartsy Fail!"
"I'm the Art King of Yale,
  I'm the artsy-fartsy Fail!"
"I make your eyeballs bleed,
  but my grade's still a Pass!"
"This ain't art,
  just crap I pull outta my *ss."
"I'm the Art King of Yale,
  I'm the artsy-fartsy Fail!"

 

A friend was mean kind enough to point out the Yale University Art Web Site

AGGHHH! Fugly doesn't begin to describe it. Remember those long-dead geocities sites? They're baaAAACCCCKKKK! ACK!

Complete with background looping music, illegible text, bad layout, colour schemes that look like they were "selected" from a paint factory explosion.

And let's not forget the ANniMAteD bAcKGR0UnDZZZ!

Canonical made a huge gaff with the way they handled their revenue grab by changing the affiliate id in the version of the Banshee music player they distribute. Shuttleworth's "explanation" about "mistakes were made" shows he doesn't really get why people are angry.

And trying to characterize RHEL and SLED as "every other commercial Linux desktop is a licensed product - you can't legally use it for free, the terms for binaries are similar to those for Windows or the MacOS." is either ignorance or a lie - take your pick. It's kind of scary, but I believe, given past performance, that it's ignorance. He really doesn't understand what his competition is doing right.

This incident has become a flashpoint for complaints about Canonical and Ubuntu, and shows no signs of going away soon. It looks like the Ubuntu brand has taken a permanent hit.

People never learn. There are so many businesses that believe they need a Facebook presence, because everyone else believes it. Like the tulip mania of 1636-7, the original dot-com bomb, or the housing bubble, businesses are spending an inordinate amount of time, energy, money, and human capital on trying to leverage a "facebook presence", despite the dearth of success stories.

We associate the open-source development model with people, many employed by businesses, who work on parts of an open-source project that interest them or that will benefit, directly or indirectly, their employers.

Part of the benefit of this model is that you'll get a diversity of views, and that those with more experience can guide and mentor those who want to contribute, but who might not be aware of all the ins and outs of the project in question.

Why can't we port that part of the development model to proprietary projects that use open-source components - say, for example, developing a software application that uses code from x, y, and z, with the understanding that any improvements in the GPL'd code will be given back to the community, but that the "secret sauce" (the data, artwork, business logic, customers, etc) remains proprietary?

Here we are firmly in the second decade of the 21st century, supposedly with enough time to adapt to concepts like the pace of "Internet time", and I still see retards who are firmly stuck in design concepts from the last century.

Point # 1. Form follows function.

The 4:3 screen format is dead. Get over it and move on, people. I'm not talking about the end users here, but the web monkeys who insist on stealing 300 pixels right off the top for their oh-so-(self)-important "branding" and "unique navigation features".

It's bad form to plaster so much clearly non-functional crap in such a dominant space.

As an example of a site that's mired in 1993 - The New Yorker - the actual article content is 460 pixels wide. It looks like it was designed by one of those "Best viewed with Internet Explorer at 800 x 600" weenies. More listed at the bottom of the article.

In a blog post dated July 10th, 2010, Kevin McBride has leaked almost 50 of the code comparisons that were submitted in evidence in SCO vs IBM.. You can download the archive.

Read on to view individual files if you don't want to download the whole thing.

Yes, this is the same Kevin McBride who says:

Software should not be “free.” In this new day and age of corporate control of the world, IP rights are an important barrier of protection that help the little guy. Big companies mostly don’t need IP rights, because they can get their way through force and market power. Small companies and individual developers need strong IP rights so the fruits of their labor are not commoditized by big companies. ...

I greatly respect Prof. Stallman and his efforts to create a clean GNU tool chain. Prof. Stallman seems to be an IP purist, who may not believe in copyrights, but would never think of bending the rules. (I’m not sure this is the case, but it is my perception of him.) ...

Whether you like it or not, the SCO cases have imposed a level of IP discipline on the open source software world that did not exist before SCO.

We also learned what the fuss was all about over Linux STREAMS ...

Florian Mueller, the same lobbyist who tried to claim that IBM was attacking open source project Hercules (an emulator) and got the smackdown (see Florian Mueller's latest FUD campaign hits a brick wall) is now threatening a similar "exposé" of groklaw.net.

As he writes

I am increasingly inclined to expose them for what they are, and to shed some light on other issues concerning them than just this one. This behavior is consistent with an overall approach that instead of digging for truth attempts to suppress the truth in a wide variety of ways.

What's Mueller's problem this time? Apparently Mueller doesn't like that groklaw bans certain people.

The plan ... For those just tuning in, Florian Mueller is spreading lies about IBM supposedly attacking an open-source project called Hercules. Florian Mueller has consistently tried to portray IBMs refusal to grant a license to Turbo Hercules - a separate, for-profit business - as an attack on open source. The z/OS operating system is to IBM mainframes what OSX is to Apple computers - an operating system licensed to run only on specific hardware Turbo Hercules isn't a reseller of IBM mainframes, and the z/OS product is only licensed for IBM hardware.

The man ... The current administrator of the open-source Hercules project - Jay Maynard - somehow or other let himself get buffaloed into making claims that IBM is attacking the Hercules project, instead of IBM pointing out (to Turbo Hercules , not Maynard) that what Turbo Hercules wanted to do was against IBM's operating system license. What was unsaid was that it's also a copyright violation even when used in Turbo Hercule's "recovery" scenario, because at some point you're going to have at least 2 machines running simultaneously, but only one license .... but that's for another time.

The ban ... The debate on groklaw spiraled out of control, and became an ongoing distraction. In the end, Maynard's groklaw account was locked to avoid wasting even more time arguing the same issues over and over.

Remember Florian Mueller, the lobbyist who pitched Monty Widenius' failed FUD campaign over the Oracle rescue of Sun Microsystems/MySQL?

Mueller got another dose of reality this weekend when he tried to troll slashdot.

Elsewhere on the net
IBM's Black Helicopters

In a submission entitled Open Source Complaint Against IBM Gets Support, Mueller once again tried to claim that IBM had threatened open source project Hercules, but slash-dotters weren't buying it. In over 200 comments, there were only 2 users who supported Mueller - and one of those two was Jay Maynard, the maintainer of Hercules.

The gloves came off quickly, and stayed off. Pardon some of the language - when dealing with a troll like Mueller you have to be pretty blunt.

Mueller's dual slam - against both the Linux Foundation and Groklaw

The Linux Foundation's largest financier is IBM. Therefore, it's obvious that they'll dismiss complaints over IBM's anticompetitive behavior and its overall hypocrisy.

Concerning Groklaw, I don't want to make claims as to who funds it (although a lot of people have previously - not in this discussion here but elsewhere - voiced theories that might make sense), but there's no doubt that it's been slavishly loyal to IBM all along. Like I said, Groklaw's PJ is more loyal to IBM than Rush Limbaugh is to the Republican Party. Even if PJ doesn't disclose anything, I venture to guess Rush Limbaugh makes a lot of money, so the Republican Party can't afford him as a staffer.

provoked a strong response from Tim99:

Florian,

An 'Ad hominem'; a 'straw man'; and conspiracy theorist; attack on an 'award-winning' --- 'widely respected' ----'Open Source advocate', in just four sentances.

Very classy. You must be so proud.

Since March 1st, 2010, it has been a requirement in Massachussetts that computer systems storing personal information run antivirus software.

Reasonably up-to-date versions of system security agent software which must include malware protection and reasonably up-to-date patches and virus definitions, or a version of such software that can still be supported with up-to-date patches and virus definitions, and is set to receive the most current security updates on a regular basis.

As long as you run Windows, set it to auto-update, and run malware and anti-virus software, the government won't fine you $5,000 per name when some Windows-based virus steals all that information.

Running unix, AIX, VMS, Tru64, OS/2, osx, linux or an embedded OS? Well, since you aren't running an anti-virus to protect your system from Windows viruses (because you don't need one), you're not in compliance with the law. Any breech, we p0wn your a$$.

In an effort to get at least some media attention to its iTunes clone, songbird announced that it was dropping "official" support for linux.

Most computer users, when asked "What do you think songbird is", thought it was a Twitter add-in, and wanted to know "Is there an app for that?"

We play "Family Feud For Linux"

Okay, team - what were the top 10 answers for "Songbid drops official linux support"? Survey says ...