Cheerful Curmudgeon

GRAMPS (my genealogy software) version 3.0.2 just came out and I upgraded. It has lots of bug fixes and tweaks, including to several things which had annoyed me about 3.0.1. Unfortunately, they did not fix one of the things which bothered me: the pages of living individuals still do not include the persons’ pictures. Those are considered “private” data and hidden along with birth dates and places and other identifying information.

Fortunately, one of the nice things about open source software, such as GRAMPS, is that you can fix it if you do not like it. I took a bit of time and tweaked one file and, voila!, my genealogy web site now includes the pictures of living people. See, for instance, Candy’s page.

Finally, I contributed my code back to the project where it will (hopefully) be useful to other people.

I am very happy that 3.0.2 fixed one bug which I found incredibly annoying. The scanned images of my source material had not been making it onto my web site. Now, the images are neatly published. For instance, you can see my great grandfather, Nathan Herzog, and his father, Salomon Herzog, in the 1870 US census. Look at lines 16 and 13, respectively. (Click on the thumbnail to see a larger image. Then click on the larger image to get a full-sized scan which is readily readable.)

As reported this morning in Slashdot, you should read and carefully consider Google Chrome’s end user license agreement (EULA) before using Chrome. It’s hard to read in the teeny tiny box that Google provides so I am reproducing the entire text below the break. I am certainly not a lawyer but I am a paranoid, grumpy old man so here is my take on some of the things in the EULA:

• In sections 4.3 through 4.5, you agree that Google can “without prior notice to you” make Chrome stop working, deny you access to your files, and even put an upper limit on how much you use Chrome.
• In section 5.1, you agree to truthfully tell Google who you are and to keep that data up to date. Sure, Chrome has its “incognito mode” which hides your browsing habits from members of your family but Google will always know who you are what what you are doing.
• In sections 6.2 and 6.3, you agree to take full responsibility for everything done under your account, even if your account was broken into by a third party. Furthermore, you agree to notify Google by visiting an obscure web page if you become aware of any unauthorized use of your account. You’ll remember that, right?
• In section 17, you agree to let Google display advertisements anywhere it wants to, not just on Google’s web pages.

Edited 9/3/2008 10:20pm: As Ars Technica points out, the problem highlighted in the following two paragraphs is not a problem. Google is amending the EULA for Chrome and the change will be retroactive to cover all of us who have already downloaded and installed Chrome.

Those are only obnoxious. It gets worse. If you use Chrome to “submit, post or display” anything you create then section 11, Content license from you, should be particularly interesting.

• In section 11.1 and 11.2, “you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services” and “You agree that this license includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships.” You just wrote the next great novel using Google Chrome and Google Docs? Guess who can publish it at will: Google. Worse, if you use Chrome to display some confidential information, even if those data were password protected on an SSL encrypted internal web site and labeled “Company Confidential,” Google has the right to “publicly display and distribute” that content.

You also give Google free reign to install software on your computer.

• In section 12.1, you agree that, “The Software which you use may automatically download and install updates from time to time from Google.” You trust them to always distribute software which is which is good for you, don’t you?

This is not necessarily bad. By using Google Chrome, you are using some very costly and valuable services. Something has to pay for that software and, in this case, that something is advertisers.

When you deal with a company, you should always remember that company’s core business. For instance, Microsoft is in the business of selling software licenses so it should be no surprise when it tries to sell you new operating systems and new versions of Outlook and Office. Google is in the business of selling advertisements so you should fully expect that it will do everything in its power to collect data from you which will let Google bring more, and more effective, advertisements to your computer screen.

(As promised the Google Chrome Terms of Service follows.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Google released Chrome today and you will see “Google Chrome is a browser” if you visit the Chrome web page. Do not be deceived, though. Chrome is not designed to replace Internet Explorer or Firefox or Safari. Chrome is designed to replace your operating system and virtually all of the software that you use every day. Chrome is the key to letting you do all of your computer stuff on the web instead of on one computer.

Think of the advantages. If you edit your grocery list on your home computer and want to print it at work, you are stuck. You cannot print that grocery list until you get home again. But if you edit your grocery list on the web, you can get to the same document and print it from any computer anywhere in the world. Similarly, if your hard disk dies, you can still get to your stuff if it is on the web. All you have to do is switch to another computer and keep on working. I could wax rhapsodic about the possibilities for way more paragraphs than you want to read but I’ll spare you.

Google wants to make this transition so easy for you that you will wonder why you did not make the switch yesterday. Chrome will take over your whole computer and hide all of the confusing gunk of Windows or OSX or Linux so you do not have to worry about it any more. You will be able to simply do your work or read your email or stare at your videos or whatever strikes your fancy. And if you are on a Mac today and on a PC tomorrow, it will not matter one bit because everything will look exactly the same.

Does this seem a bit far fetched? Take a look at how your computer appears if you use Internet Explorer to read the news. (Click on the picture to see it larger.)

That looks pretty normal. You can see that you are running IE because there is lots of IE stuff on the top and bottom of the screen and the news is in the middle. Now here is the same web page in Firefox.

That is pretty much the same experience. You can see that you are running Firefox instead of IE because the stuff at the top and bottom is different but the browser stuff is still there and the news is in the middle.

Now look at the same page in Google Chrome:

Now that looks different. Where did the browser go? It vanished in much the same way that your operating system vanishes into the background. As you are reading the article, are you really aware of whether you are using Linux or Windows or OSX? Of course not. But you see Firefox or IE or Safari all the time because it intrudes on your life so boldly.

Chrome is not a web browser. It is the platform on which your application software runs. Reuters picked this up when it reported,

Google co-founder Sergey Brin said Chrome was designed to address the shift to using software from within a Web browser rather than as locally installed computer applications running inside Microsoft Windows or some other operating system.

“I think operating systems are kind of an old way to think of the world,” Brin told a group of reporters after the news conference at Google’s Mountain View, California headquarters.

in Google sees new browser displacing desktop software.

Does this sound familiar? Pick your poison:

1. Microsoft Windows + Microsoft Outlook + Microsoft Exchange + Microsoft Office
2. Google Chrome + Google GMail + Google Calendar + Google Docs

Is this good or bad? That is the $64 question, of course. Google’s web-based applications carry no license fees and ought to be highly reliable. But they come with advertisements and the implicit agreement that you trust Google to manage your data properly. Naturally, Chrome will also run other applications, just like Microsoft Windows runs applications which were not written by Microsoft. But by providing one platform which runs identically across all computers, and which is written and maintained by the same Google which provides all of those whiz-bang applications, you can bet that Google is assuring a first-class user experience if you settle comfortably into the Google environment whole heartedly.

Which do you want on your computer? Microsoft Windows or Apple OSX or Linux… or Google Chrome?

LibraryThing did something amazing last Thursday: it made images of the covers of a million books available for anyone to use for free. This is way better than using Amazon.com’s book covers because you can display them without linking to Amazon. If you are a library or an independent book store, having links on your web site which can draw your patrons or customers to Amazon is not a particularly good thing. It is obviously better than a commercial book cover service because, well, it’s free.

Here is an example. I own a copy of 100 Great Fantasy Short, Short Stories. Since I am using a LibraryThing cover, I can legally link the image to the LibraryThing description (which I have done) or I could have linked it to my own LibraryThing catalog or to anything else I choose.

There are a couple of small potential problems and these prompted me to write a little caching script for the LibraryThing covers. First, you need to use your own developer key to obtain the covers from LibraryThing and there is a slight chance that you could exceed the maximum number of covers per day that LT is willing to provide to you. Second, since I am quite sure that this service will be very popular, LT’s servers could get a bit overburdened if everybody hits them for images.

The solution? Install my little LTcovers PHP script on your own web server. It is just a single file and needs a single directory in which it can store copies of the book cover images that you need. As your patrons/customers/users display covers on your web site, LTcovers will grab the images from LibraryThing and keep a local copy. Once configured, it needs no maintenance.

What do you need?

1. The ltcovers.php script. Right-click on that link and “Save As” ltcovers.php on your own web server.
2. Your own LibraryThing developer key. It’s free and you need to have your own.
3. You might want a 1×1 pixel transparent GIF image as a default image, in case you request a cover which LibraryThing does not have. You can download one from here. (Use “Save As” again.)

My LTcovers script is available for free under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

The images from LibraryThing are available under these terms, “You also agree to some very limited terms: You do not make LibraryThing cover images available to others in bulk. But you may cache bulk quantities of covers. Use does not involve or promote a LibraryThing competitor. If covers are fetched through an automatic process (eg., not by people hitting a web page), you may not fetch more than one cover per second.”

I hope that between LibraryThing and this script, you can save a few dollars (if you are now paying for a commercial book cover service) and provide a better experience for your web site visitors (if you are now linking to Amazon).

Shameless commercial plug: If you want to use LTcovers but cannot install it on your own web server, Hen’s Teeth Network will be glad to provide you with a small hosting account quite suitable for running it. We will even install LTcovers for free if you sign up for one of our hosting accounts.

It’s nice to read that Jeremy LaCroix at Linux.com agrees with me, though our phraseology differs a bit.

Quite a few reviews of new Linux releases these days try to determine if a distribution is “ready for the desktop.” I myself have probably been guilty of using that phrase, but I think it’s time we officially retire this criterion.

LaCroix says that, It’s time to retire “ready for the desktop” while I suggest that it’s time to retire the question, “Is Linux ready for the desktop?” We are both putting forth the same point, though: There are now at least three viable choices in choosing a desktop operating environment: Linux, Mac, and Windows.

Yup, Linux on the desktop is ready for prime-time.

Technology is challenging enough when we really know what is going on. The situation deteriorates rapidly as we progress through only thinking we know what is going on to being completely clueless. My step-mother just started using a computer, the first computer that has been solely hers, the first one where she can do whatever she likes with it and no one is going to tell her to keep out of their work. It is also her first computer (other than a WebTV) on which she can get to the world wide web.

She bought a copy of The Internet for Dummies and that has been helpful but even this book assumes she knows too much. She has had questions for me like, “When do I press on the right side of the bar?” She is using a touch pad on an Asus Eee PC so her question translates to, “When should I right-click?” That’s a good question and the answer, “When you want a pop-up or context menu” means nothing to her.

Then she asked, “When do I click twice on the left side of the bar?” This was a little easier. To be non-technical, I advised her to single click and, if that does not do what she wants, try double-clicking. The jury is still out on whether this helps.

Finally, she described a real corker of a problem. Neither Candy nor I had any real advice for her, other than to check her manual for a Num-Lock key. The problem, as she described it, was that whenever she typed the “3″ key, she would see an asterisk. Since she lives 850 miles away, I cannot see her screen. I am dependent on her descriptions. I assume she accurately describes what she is seeing and she assumes that I understand what she tells me.

Bad assumptions all around.

At first, it sounds like she is getting shifted characters, or at least the asterisk, all the time. Then it develops that the problem only happens in Firefox, not in OpenOffice.org. Then she tells me that it only happens when trying to enter her password into a new web site, not when doing anything else in Firefox. Ah ha! It turned out that she was typing her password and the browser was obfuscating it, completely correct behavior. But she is so new to the whole computer “thing” that even this behavior, which we take as much for granted as getting water from a sink when we turn the tap on, was baffling.

It’s easy to forget how much we know. That forgetfulness makes teaching all the more difficult.

Is Linux ready to replace Microsoft Windows? You have almost certainly heard the question and you have probably wondered about it. You might even have tried Linux yourself and given some serious thought to switching.

Most people avoid switching, though, not because they particularly care about the operating system but because switching would force them to abandon familiar programs and change comfortable workflows. And face it, changing operating systems is high risk and a lot of work.

There is a whole class of users for whom Linux is a natural choice, however. People who are not yet Windows or Mac users, people who are choosing their “first” computer, can as easily select Linux as any other operating system.

My step-mother wanted a computer for four tasks:

1. Email.
2. Writing letters. (For those of you too young to know what this is, a “letter” is kind of like an email printed on a piece of paper.)
3. Looking at some web sites.
4. Solitaire.

Sound familiar? Except for the order of the tasks, Lorraine’s needs are pretty typical. Broken town into technical requirements, we have:

1. Web browser
2. Word processor
3. Printer
4. Solitaire

Sounds even more familiar, doesn’t it? These requirements lists give absolutely no reason to prefer one operating system over another.

One more step. As a real world consumer, Lorraine has two more requirements, in no particular order:

• Price
• Reliability

These last two finally provide some guidance toward choosing between Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Of the three, Windows is clearly the least reliable; only an idiot would run Windows without good virus scanning software installed and regularly updated. OS X is better than Windows but not perfect. At the recent CanSecWest security conference, Ubuntu Linux proved to be unhackable while both Vista and OS X laptops were successfully hacked. When it comes to price, both Windows and OS X are more expensive than Linux, which is free.

Linux comes out the winner, given these requirements. It does what she wants. The price is right. And it is at least as reliable, probably more so, than the other two operating systems. The only question remaining is: Can Lorraine use it easily and effectively?

I chose an Asus Eee PC 2G Surf for her. Out of the box, the computer includes the software she needs (Firefox web browser, OpenOffice.org word processor, and a solitaire game). I turned it on, entered her name and the city she lives near (so it would “know” which timezone she lives in), entered the password for her Wi-Fi wireless network, and Lorraine was up and running. Total set-up time was well under five minutes.

I chose an inexpensive HP DeskJet printer for her because HP does a great job with Linux compatibility and the printer was on sale at the local office supply store. I plugged it into her computer, clicked the “Add printer” button, and in less than a minute, Lorraine was printing her first letter.

Lorraine has been using her new computer for a week and I think that I can pronounce the experiment an unequivocal success. Her computer does exactly what she needs with no fuss and no bother.

Her only complaints have been related to the small screen and keyboard on the Eee PC and her unfamiliarity with using a touch pad instead of a mouse; the Eee PC may not have been the best form factor for her but the small size fits her lifestyle so the jury is still out. She has had some questions about her software such as how to add a new email address to her address book and how to turn off auto-completion within OpenOffice.org. Other than those issues, and learning how to use a modern computer (her last real computer was ten years ago and since then she has only used a WebTV), the new machine “just works.”

None of these issues have anything to do with Linux nor would they have failed to come up had we chosen a different operating system. As an aside, my cousin Sam picked up the computer and without a single question or comment quickly checked his stock transactions. Though I did not confirm with him, it was not obvious that he even realized he was using Linux.

Lorraine’s openness to trying something new certainly contributed greatly to her success with Linux. She came to the table with no preconceived notions of what any particular dialog box “should” look like or what specific buttons she “should” push to make something italic in the word processor. These comfort factors can be significant barriers to people with extensive history with one set of software. On the other hand, those willing to experiment a bit may find that a Linux computer offers cost savings and improved security vs. Windows and Mac OS X computers. How much cost savings? As an example, here is the total for everything we purchased for her computer:

Asus Eee PC mini-laptop computer: $299
OpenOffice.org word processor: $0
Virus scanner: $0
All other software: $0

TOTAL: $299

The question of if Linux is ready for prime time is moot. The question now is only whether Linux is right for you.

I run my company using OpenOffice.org instead of Microsoft Office. It does everything we need and costs a whopping $0.00; not a bad deal for a small business. To be more specific, OpenOffice.org

• Gives us word processor and spreadsheet programs that more than handle our documentation needs,
• Allows us to open Word and Excel documents which clients send to us,
• Allows us to save our documents in Word, Excel, and Adobe Reader (PDF) formats, and
• Runs on Windows and Linux, which is critical since three of us use Windows and one uses Linux.

About the only fly in the ointment is that OpenOffice.org version 2 cannot open Microsoft Office 2007 documents (e.g., .docx files). In practice, this has not been too much trouble since everyone who has sent such a document to us has been able to send us an older format .doc file upon request. Still, I would like to avoid bugging clients with such requests.
Relief is on the way, though. OpenOffice.org Ninja OpenOffice.org 3.0’s new features, an early look includes this snippet, along with several other cool features:

Microsoft Office 2007 (also called Office Open XML) file formats include .docx, .pptx, and .xlsx. Despite the similarity in names, these formats are significantly different than the Microsoft Office formats used since 1997. OpenOffice.org 3 will offer native read and write support.

There are lots of other useful, new features, too. See the article for “full disclosure.”

The scheduled release date is still about six months away but one of the nice things about open source software such as OpenOffice.org is that you can download the early versions if you want them.

Sure, Microsoft Office provides features that OpenOffice.org does not. But for the vast majority of home and office users, OpenOffice.org will do everything you need and save you hundreds of dollars in license fees. Download it and give it a try.

I learned vi back in the bad ol’ days of 1980 when I was fresh out of college and working on a PDP 11/70 running UNIX version 6 with DEC VT100 terminals on a dozen users’ desks. Life was good. I even wrote a short book, How to Use Vi in 10 Easy Lessons, which was used inside TRW to train WPS-8 users on how to create documentation with nroff, the MM macros, and a VT100 on a UNIX system. Go figure.

A couple years later, I was introduced to emacs and life instantly got much better. Unlike vi, emacs can split the screen and display two (or more) files simultaneously or (glory of glories) two parts of the same file. Never mind that the screen way back then was exactly 24 lines by 80 columns in size and splitting it in two meant that you had two “windows,” one ten lines tall and one 11 lines tall. It was cool (and useful, too).

I thought I was pretty cool until I learned that real programmers spurn both emacs and vi and use “cat >a.out” instead. Someday I may approach that level of coolness.

And now, this very morning, xkcd raised the bar (click the image for a larger version):

I don’t think I can even dream of attaining that level….

Seven months ago, I switched from Windows XP to Ubuntu Linux on my primary (work and home) computer. Life has not been perfect with Ubuntu Linux (it wasn’t perfect with Windows, either) but I certainly judge the experience to be an overwhelming success.

If you are considering trying Linux, and I strongly encourage you to at least give it a look-see. You can now download both the instructor’s and student’s guides for a ten-part Ubuntu 7.10 desktop training course.

The Ubuntu folks announced the release [on January 15] of the Ubuntu 7.10 Desktop Course…. The ten sections of the course include: introducing Ubuntu; exploring the Ubuntu desktop; using the Internet; using OpenOffice applications; Ubuntu and games; customising the desktop and applications; making the most of images and photos; playing music and videos; ubuntu help and support; and partitioning and booting.

Naturally, the entire course is free, covered by a Creative Commons license.

Try this (it won’t change a single file on your computer): Download Ubuntu Linux, burn it to a CD, and leave the CD in the drive while you reboot your computer. It will come up running Ubuntu Linux from the CD, without changing anything on your disk drive. Play around. Experiment. See if you like it.