Monotone DVCS

I was surprised to see that I have not posted about revision control systems yet. I began using Subversion about a year ago for personal projects; it was a nice start, and I had my beloved server under my bed hosting my repositories for local access.

Since then, I have switched to Mercurial, which is so much more painless than Subversion, being distributed in nature, and the TortoiseHg Windows shell extension made it even more useful for me and my colleagues at the University.

Today, and for the past week or so, I have been watching the Pidgin Instant Messenger project, which uses the Monotone distributed version control system (DVCS). Monotone uses RSA keys (like SSH) to determine the identity of remote peers, and keeps its data in sqlite structures. It seems to be a very idealistic system, when it comes to version control, which is what I am always looking for.

Cruise over and have a look!

Registered Linux User #370740 (http://counter.li.org)

StackOverflow and ServerFault

I cannot believe I did not jump into these communities earlier - StackOverflow and ServerFault are two amazing community websites in question-answer forum fashion about programming and software development, and IT administration, respectively. I have occasionally landed on StackOverflow doing Google searches for programming-related problems, but from now on, I will be starting there and moving outward as needed. A nice feature about both sites (which use the same custom framework) is the "interesting tags" feature, which allows you to fine-tune your preferences and tailor the homepage to your interests. Both sites integrate with each other and use OpenID for authentication.

Have a look!

Registered Linux User #370740 (http://counter.li.org)

California State University Woes

Today, the California State University Board of Trustees voted to institute an additional 20% fee increase, over and above the standard 10% fee increase approved in May. This is to counter the gaping $584 million hole that the California legislature left for us. During today's meeting of the Committee on Finance, to which the fee proposal was referred, the Lieutenant Governor John Garamendi recommended that the proposal be amended with the stipulation that the Board lobby the CA state legislature to adopt AB656, which would impose an oil severance tax, in the State of California, yielding $1 billion to higher education in this state (the Community Colleges, the California State University, and the University of California), with the additional provision that upon successfully achieving this tax, the Board would consequently reduce the tuition and furlough policies that had been instituted for immediate relief from the present crisis. This proposal was seconded during the committee meeting, but summarily opposed; it was not heard by the entire Board. Please see the full text of the resolution.

Arguments in support of the fee increase cited the State as having the lowest fees in the country, while these claims were countered with the cost of living in this State. The fourth strongest economy in the world, as the State was cited, was then recommended to reduce the affordability of its (arguably) most effective educational institution to solve a problem inherited by the CSU from the state legislature. The final challenge to the new policy rested on the simple fact that it seemed that the decision-makers had not exercised sufficient innovation and creativity in arriving at this conclusion, and that, given the resources (if only intellectual), students, faculty, and staff from the CSU would take action to lobby Sacramento of their own means.

Education is the most idealistic institution of our modern society; politics does not come close; medicine demands perfection, which can only be achieved by an equally thorough practical and theoretical education. It seems quite bleak to hope that these ideals can still be sought after, given the additional burden imposed today upon the 450,000 students who currently attend the 23 CSU campuses statewide.

Then we wonder how Open Source could help alleviate the budget burden... most likely not in the short run, and not without changes in staff to accommodate the transition.

Registered Linux User #370740 (http://counter.li.org)

Tiny Footprint Mode

Microsoft did it again! I pulled up the Windows Task Manager on my slow laptop to diagnose its problem, only to find that even after several seconds of waiting, it was still not showing its status bar, menu bar, or title bar. I let it go. Then today I was on it again, and saw the same thing, even after rebooting the system (something that Microsoft Windows seems to be addicted to). That led me to Google the symptom: "windows xp borderless task manager." I landed on this result. Windows Task Manager was running in Tiny Footprint Mode! Seriously - Tiny Footprint Mode. What was Microsoft thinking? Other products have mini mode, or slim mode, or they use a cute permutation of some "small" term and their product's name or role, like "mini player" or Windows Media Player's toolbar mode, where it embeds basic playback controls in the Windows taskbar.

Tiny Footprint Mode.

Registered Linux User #370740 (http://counter.li.org)

Search Engines, Web Browsers, and Operating Systems

Things are getting quite heated with IE8 being tested by the community since being released through Windows Update, the imminent release of Firefox 3.5, and the whole Bing vs. Google hype. Tech news is littered with arguments for and against, studies conducted under very close scrutiny of the vendors themselves, and propaganda released by each vendor, desperately trying to get a leg up over the competition. Behind the scenes, the magma is heating up over Windows 7 and Apple's Snow Leopard.

What do you see in common? Microsoft vs. Everybody! It's Microsoft against Google, Firefox (Mozilla foundation; open source community), and Apple. The others do not put themselves up against everybody else so strongly - they surely, and justifiably so, promote their own products and services, and when they need to, keep the facts straight (IE8; Google), but they all play clean, while Microsoft seems to be a giant finally unseated in many respects.

Reading news in general, we can see a trend toward more awareness of alternatives, contrasted with the view that Microsoft, Windows, and Microsoft Office were synonymous for their functional roles - Software, Operating System, and Office Productivity Suite (see NY Times malware). People are starting to wonder and ask about switching to other vendors - Linux or Mac, OpenOffice.org, etc. Microsoft still remains the giant for the enterprise tier of users, but it is not uncommon to find Mac offices, or offices that are comprised of a heterogeneous set of computing technology, each individual pooling what he feels the best for each aspect of his workflow. We find Linux-based print servers, firewalls, web and database servers; these are connected to Windows and Mac clients, as well as the occasional Windows client. Then you will also see Windows solutions deployed in the infrastructure of the office for specialized applications that only support Windows for their purposes. Especially with the advent of cloud computing, these lines only grow fuzzier.

It is quite fascinating to watch the explosion of technology these days, everything attempting to achieve a niche, play into the social network and interconnectedness, and ride the tide into the cloud. There are all kinds of web sites/services set up to share various types of information in a categorized or tagged community setting - which ones will survive as leaders in their respective niche? Time will tell, as it always has.

Registered Linux User #370740 (http://counter.li.org)