Internet for Digital Nomads

So you want to see the world and work while doing it? If the work you do depends on the internet there is no better time than the current times and it may get better but you need to make some considerations.

When you are traveling on a van, camper or backpacking internationally, you can't count on good WiFi availability or cell coverage so you need to plan according to your needs. Hopefully this miniguide will help you.

What kind of internet access do you need?

Before you do anything else, you need to assess your usage requirements. You need to consider volume, bandwidth, latency and availability requirements

Volume: The amount of data you use every month for work and personal tasks. It is usually measured in GB.

Bandwidth: the minimum data transfer rate you need to do the job you do. It is usually measured in Mbps.

Latency: round trip time of data packages. This is, the time between your computer sending the data package, getting to the remote location and receiving a confirmation signal. It is measured in milliseconds.

Availability: How much do you depend on a reliable connection.

With those definitions out of the way, here is how to assess your usage:

Volume

If you currently work from home you can look at the stats in your home router or your home provider website. Analyze if there are "optional usage loads" such as streaming which you can defer.

Bandwidth

Asses your bandwith needs: Are you regularly in vidéoconférences or do you need to transfer large chunks of data at a time requiring fast speed? For that check at the applications requirements. They will usually say "at least xxx Mbps". E.g. zoom requirements

Do the research for your most critical applications. And add up things you need to do concurrently. e.g. if you use app A which needs 1 Mbps and app B which needs 2 Mbps, then you need at least 3 Mbps.

Latency

Consider the most critical applications to decide the minimum. Latency requirements are usually listed as part of the application requirements. Consult the vendor information.

Do you work with remote databases? High latency will suck regardless of the bandwidth 

For gaming you may be OK with 30 ms. Less than that it may be painful when you die before you see your opponent :)

But for Voice over IP 150 ms should be good. And for email, web, social media or srreaming it doesn't really matter.

Availability

Can you work disconnected for a while and then connect as required or do you need constant access to the internet?

Putting it all together

Now that you know your requirements you can start figuring out what kind of access you need. Here is the list of options from more expensive to cheapest:

Super high availability and low volume regardless of any other consideration (location, speed, latency): You will need a satellite connection. It will allow you to send and receive email, send text and other low usage activities regardless of where you are in the world.

High bandwith + high volume + low latency + high availability or even just consistent low latency: Forget about depending on the celular network, hotspots or public Wifi. Plan your route based on co-working spaces availability.

High bandwith + High volume + high availability: get an unlimited, non throttled data plan and plan your route based on your network coverage map. Get a cellphone booster such as weboost.

High volume + high availability: Get an unlimited mobile plan even if it is throttled. You can leverage public or campgrown hotspots as needed. Get a good wifi extender.such as wifi camp pro 2.

High volume: you can leverage public or campground hot spots as needed.

Low everything: (e.g. using the web, reading emails, text messaging apps, social media) then just your current data plan plus leveraging public and campground hotspots as needed.

With that information you may also want to adapt your usage to conditions.

In our case, we need to find good co-working spaces during some period of the month but can live with good cell coverage and public and campground hotspots otherwise.  Moving some intensive database processes to the server side will also reduce the number of days requiring co-working spaces.

Good luck in your travels and see you around!

The Justin Trudeau's betrayal of his Proportional representation promises

In 2015 Justin Trudeau said:

Click to see original tweet

I've really reflected in this because I felt betrayed when he went back on his word and the First-Past-the-Post (FPP) system remained in place. Many people think that once he got a majority, it wasn't to his advantage to change the system.

Maybe I am naive but after that reflection, now I trust that his reason for going back on his word was that, after consultations and analysis, he figured out that there are more Canadians who collectively prefer FPP, than Canadians who prefer a particular alternative.

I am convinced that many people who now say that he should have kept his word, would have criticized him for behaving as an autocrat implementing a particular Proportional Representation (PR) system they didn't like.

The reality is that whatever PR system chosen, wouldn't be the "best" proportional representation according to a large part of the population.

I read yesterday a parable of 9 people who wanted to choose something, One convinced two others for choosing a crappy option, and from the other 6, each 2 proposed better option but each one different than the others. When they voted, the three people who wanted the crapy option won. I think that's why we are stuck with FPP. We may agree that proportional representation is better than FPP but not agreeing on which one.

In the end, it was his mistake in the first place for being so confident about something that he didn't know he could achieve; but also our mistake for failing to agree on a PR system. Any of them, even if we had to review it and fine tune it later. 

 Instead of "castigating" the Liberals, we should continue working on achieving PR consensus.

My story of financial literacy

As I was following a news feed from inside the company I came across a post from one of our Executives who regularly writes very compelling blog posts

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/more-taboo-than-sex-bernard-letendre/

This one in particular inspired me to share my own story of financial literacy. Hopefully you will find some inspiration too.

I need to start by acknowledging my privilege. I've been privileged to have the right examples from my parents and the right education to be able to make the right decisions. They worked very hard on their professional jobs to give me and my siblings a good middle class life. 

From my parents, one of the most important lessons I learned was budgeting, spending within your means and to put value above price.

Every month, my parents would sit at the dinner table and take out the budget notebook, my mom would take out all the bills, and would start reading them to my dad, water, electricity, taxes, school, school trip, school uniforms, car payments, etc. My dad would write it down and add things up. Every now and then, expenses would be higher than the income and they would discuss how to borrow from the savings and how to repay it. Rule #1 credit card was paid in full monthly. Open discussion, we would know when money was tight.

There was one "exception" to the budget. My dad would reimburse us ANY money we used for books, ANY kind of books.

When it was time to buy clothes, my mom would always say: Better good quality even if it is more expensive, cheap clothes will look nice one day but soon they will look bad and you'll need to replace them. Good quality will show for longer and you won't need to replace as fast. She learned that from my grand mother.

Every week we would go to the market and every two weeks to the supermarket. We knew the cost of each thing and, bonus, each could choose the food for one of the days of the week (family of 6).

Needless to say, my parents aren't rich but they retired without any money problems.

Now the second part

My adult life didn't exactly start lined up for financial success. By 23 I was married, had two sons and my wife (now ex) didn't work and didn't know the value of money. She would call me stingy even when we never had any money for savings. However, I refused to break rule #1: Pay the credit card in full. I had a great job and made relatively good money, and bought our own apartment, but I worked 16 hours a day and I didn’t have any savings at the end of the month.

The money I put in the apartment was like a savings account when we wanted to move to Canada.

We separated after coming to Canada and the children lived with me. We started going to the groceries and market together, we had a contest to figure out the real cost/value of what we bought: Is the 500 ml can for $2 cheaper than the 1 Lt for $3.50. Is the brand name really better than the no name for 1/2 the price. Sometimes the answer was "no" and we would buy the brand name. We would cook at home and actually price our dinner. It wasn't unusual to have a great dinner for $2 each. They were 6 and 7 at the time. Good practice of math too!

As soon as they were 15 they started working. And at that age, they wanted to dress well. My take was: your work money is yours to do as you please and if you want expensive clothes, you buy them. Now that it was their money, they spent it wisely.

As they started growing up, they started paying for more of their expenses. Gradually, planned.  When they wanted to use the car, they paid for the gas. If they wanted to travel with friends, they would save, and so on.

When it was time for university, they both chose local schools. One of them decided to experience residence life and he paid for it. When he saw how expensive it was, he came back home.

As soon as they were old enough, I advised them to get a credit card and pay it in full every month. It would give them convenience, but most importantly, a clear record about what they spent their money on and a credit history. They haven't missed a payment since.

When they started getting a surplus from their income, I advised them to open a TFSA and do their own risk tolerance assessment. They saw the money go down with the recession and I encouraged them to hold it. Thankfully it bounced back.

When my Amex would give me a 0% interest of 6 months, I would show them the effect of paying my line of credit with the Amex and then after 6 months paying the Amex with the savings throughout those 6 months. Sometimes the difference between doing that and paying down the line of credit right away from the investments, would be hundreds of dollars of "free" money. But I also showed what would be the effect of not paying down the Amex after 6 months: hundreds of wasted dollars.

And it all brings us to today:

The older one finished school and went on a two years specialty, I still paid school but he paid all his other expenses. When he finished, he was able to take an unpaid Internship exactly where he wanted and he was able to survive out of savings (no debt) for 6 months in Toronto! That internship allowed him to eventually get a job he really likes. Now he has a good job, good credit, no debt and some investments. He is 27.

The other one decided to continue working and traveling for a year, after university. But now he is in Sint Maarten, studying medicine. While I am the guarantor of his professional studies loan, he is taking full ownership of the debt and of course, his own credit history helped him get the loan. Not only that, but he has his own financial cushion to cover his own expenses for at least a year if need be.

My life lessons are:

1# Don't acquire debt that won't pay for its own but mainly that you can't pay if things go south. A mortgage: may be good debt (If you don't overextend yourself). Line of credit to finance a good investment opportunity: may be good debt (if you can pay the debt even if the investment fails). Credit card debt to pay for a vacation: Bad debt.

#2 Value and price are not the same thing. Lower price is not always better but also, higher price is not always better value. Evaluate each time.

#3 Your partner should share the same financial values as you. One bad partner can ruin your finances and your future

#4 Children need to hear when money is tight and what sacrifices you need to do to solve it. Eventually, they will need to solve it on their own and they must know that some sacrifices are necessary

#5 Children need to learn to manage their own money gradually. They shouldn't feel there is a safety net even if there is one

#6 Children need to learn to learn how interest works to their advantage or to their disadvantage.

Financial literacy is learned:

If you have the privilege of knowing how to manage your money, don't be selfish and talk to your children about it.

If you didn't have the privilege of a good example at home, reach out to other people or organizations which can show you some of those lessons. Don't leave it to chance.

My sad prediction about Trump's presidency

I will risk making a prediction. A sad one by the way. I think I figured out Trump's strategy: He will sign executive orders related to his 4 or 5 campaign talking points. He will then sit back and spend the rest of his term fighting all the challenges to those executive orders and saying "I am doing the right thing and see all those elites fighting me".

He will control the narrative and get the public opinion of the "little guy" on his side. He does not need to demonstrate or achieve anything substantial on the economic front. Just saying that there is no progress because he is being blocked will rally the troupes to give him another 4 years.

What he will achieve is increase the anti-minorities sentiment and that will be his true legacy.

What is your worth?

The other day my nephew twitted the following thought:
"I have the potential to be one of those great professors that complain that their peers earn much more"
That made me think that, if at his age I knew what I know now I'd be making at least twice what I'm making now and if I didn't know what I know now, I'd be making at most half.

This post is for Diego.

First some definitions (maybe not the academic ones)

• Value: The intrinsic value
• Worth: The economic value
• Price/Earnings: The actual amount of money received in exchange.

Your value

One of the things I know now (or believe) is that, in human terms we are all equivalent and what we earn or what we are worth does not change that value. 

Your worth
We are "economic products" with an economic worth. How much you know, contribute, produce, help, etc. With your talent and intelligence you have the potential to have a high worth. Keep cultivating it.

Your earnings

Your earnings will rarely reflect your worth.  But who sets the price? Look at examples around you and you'll see the answer: Some people let others establish their price, some set their own. That's how two to products (people) with the same worth (knowledge and ability) can have very different prices.

An extreme example: A pet rock was $4 while the same rock from a quarry was a fraction of a cent. The difference? The presentation (packaging and marketing)
Look around again and you'll see many "pet rock" people. 

I am not advocating for you to be a "pet rock" as people eventually realizes what your actual worth is. It is really up to you to decide if you want someone to undervalue your worth, to fight to have earnings commensurate to your worth Or to increase your perceived worth and increase your earnings. This same worth, same effort, very different results.

Your potential

Regarding that last point: It seems to be human nature to desire things with a higher perceived worth. An expensive restaurant won't necessarily be more nutritious than a small restaurant run out of someone's garage, however expensive restaurants are always packed. They package themselves in style, presentation, service, popularity, etc.

This is, if you project a high worth, people will perceive you have a higher worth and will pay accordingly!! Crazy, right? The more your charge the more desirable you become.

Bottom line: It all comes down to confidence, self esteem and your ability to project that worth. I started working on that late in life. You have a chance to start working on it right now, if that's what you want.

Canadian democracy works

Every time there is an election or there are news about an elected representative you can just expect the bickering and name calling.

"Harper is a $@%& and ruined Canada", "The Liberals are corrupt and have ruined Ontario", etc.
Well, Harper hasn't ruined Canada, the Liberals didn't ruined Canada and haven't ruined Ontario and the NDP hasn't either.

 I may dislike some policies but I think politicians are trying to do the right thing, even though we may differ on the means. I hope the federal election comes soon and we can have a change, but let's stop the partisanship bickering. We all want a better Canada, calling people names won't make it better.

Representatives get elected. I may disagree with the lack of proportional representation but even that was put to a ballot and it didn't pass. Which means that even the fact that you can have a majority without a majority of popular vote was a democratic decision.

 A democracy is resilient. People may make mistakes and things may go bad some times; but we have the power to have alternation . If you think Canada is ruined, then do something to fix it or go somewhere else. When I thought the country I came from was ruined, I left, and came to a place where I feel I can do something about it.

Google glass potential

Back in 2006 I wrote a post titled The next revolution. I got reminded of it while reading WIRED's critique of Google Glass pointing out that it is not useful enough (yet)

In summary : Not cool enough for non geeks and not good enough for geeks.

While I concur with that assessment, I still see huge potential. Like the Apple "Newton", the Google Glass is probably ahead of the curve, both the technological and social

The more I think of it, the more I see it integrated with the car controls. With product location and pricing at stores. meta content on movies and TV programs.

I don't know how long it will take to be a reality but as I pointed out on my original post, 20 years does not seem to be that far these days.

Does Linux have too many versions?

Today I was reading a response to a SuSE 3.1 review. The responder commented on how "Linux" has too many versions that work differently and that they should all amalgamate.

That made me reflect on one of the main difficulties of explaining GNU/Linux based distributions: We (Free software advocates) haven't been able to properly explain that "Linux" is not an operating system, It is the kernel that drives many Distributions mostly based on the GNU/Linux operating system.

When people say "Linux has many versions" it shows that even people that use one of them don't fully understand that they are talking about many different Distributions. Some more experimental, some more free (as in freedom), some more stable, some more mass market appealing.

For example:

• SuSE and Ubuntu with commercial support and proprietary extensions
• Debian is one of the most stable and more free (as in freedom), but at the expense of older software
  
• Linux Miint is in between both
•  gNewSense is mean to be totally free or proprietary extensions.

"Development teams" for the different distributions are mainly responsible for the packaging and polishing the configuration. That's why the packaging and configuration tools tend to be different. But for the most part they all follow the same standards and moving from one to the other is not a difficult task.

If you are new to Free software, just try a few of them. Stick to one you like. After a while, you will be able to do things in any of them with little difficulty.

If you are a seasoned Free software user, I ask that, when speaking to other people, you to use the name of the Distribution you are using and maybe adding "which is a GNU/linux operating system".

This may help new users understand how we don't have fragmentation, we have options.

LulzSec, Hacking and other crimes

If you don't know it by now, LulzSec is a group that took unto themselves to uncover security flaws at several companies and organizations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LulzSec

Hacking into other peoples data/property is illegal whether they misuse that data or not. But so is the negligence shown by the companies caught with their guard down.

Nobody but me should care if I leave my home unlocked but even if I do it is still illegal for someone to enter without permission. That's my home and my risk.

That's not the same if someone entrusts me with their property. In that case I become responsible for that property and I must make sure it is well secured. If something happens to that property I am on the hook.

In the LulzSec case, it seems that the authorities are only interested in the people that hacked the data, not on the people that didn't secure it properly.

If in fact LulzSec did not misuse the information, I'd say that the companies that didn't secure it properly are even guiltier as they are exposing OUR data to someone else that may misuse it.

Both are wrong, Both should be held accountable but it seems that authorities think that the real problem was the messenger, not the message.

Are you ethnic?

Harpers Conservative party is trying to attract "Very Ethnic" people.

I've always found that the way the word "Ethnic" is used in Canada is very offensive. As if saying "us vs. them".

Go to the dictionary and check what it means:

"pertaining to or characteristic of a people, especially a group (ethnic group) sharing a common and distinctive culture, religion, language, or the like"

Why, then, do people refer to "Ethnic food" or "Ethnic people" ONLY when referring to someone that identifies with a non European or Canadian ethnic group?.

How come schnitzels are not referred to as "Ethnic food" but Tacos are?

Are Sikh "Ethnic people" but Christians aren't?

Some people are Very Ethnic, of course, meaning that they closely identify with a common group. But that is regardless of origin. I live in Kitchener/Waterloo, with a quite visible and Very Ethnic German population.

Some other people, whether from European, Indian, Chinese or Mexican origin, do not have that strong ethnic identification. They are not Very Ethnic.

I understand and accept the term "Ethnic minorities". I'm an Ethnic minority, but not Very Ethnic.

I would also accept if, when they say "Very Ethnic", they were also referring to the organizers of the Octoberfest or the Highland games which are Very Ethnic festivals.

Only referring to people of an origin different than our own as "Ethnic" is plain racism.

Can you downgrade for your next computer?

I was reading a ZDNet blog where the author argued that point.

It was interesting to me how some people totally missed the message. As they didn't feel the need to downgrade, they thought that no-one should downgrade.

Some people can downgrade some people cannot.

Me for example, at work I used to develop, I required all the CPU and memory I could get.

Now, I am a systems integrator, connects to servers. Do project opportunity assessments, proposals, architecture diagrams. I just need as much RAM as necessary to keep open 10-15 applications. CPU does not matter that much. I'd rather have a lighter computer that I can carry to meetings and presentations.

My children are in University: Science. What they need is portability and long battery life. They carry netbooks. They each have a 23" monitor to hook up for when they are at their desk.

Of course, were they in Graphics or Computer science their set up would be very different.

It was funny, when we bought one of the netbooks (i3 with 4 GB DDR4). The guy at the store was lying through his teeth trying to convince us for a larger model: "With that computer you'll barely be able to use the Internet". He didn't know my son and I knew better.

My dad? almost 80, has a Quad core with 4GB and lots of HDD as he likes to do photography. To go to the country club, he takes his netbook and he is happy as long as he has a wireless connection.

My Mom? She is a computerphobic. She just needed a computer to email some friends but didn't want to go into my dad's den to use the desktop. I got her an old Dell C610.

At home I have an older P4 desktop. It has lots of expansion bays, and several HDD. CPU solow, memory, 1.5 GB. It does not matter, It's for storage, media server, casual browsing and preparing my presentations.

I mean. Different needs, different computers. Not everyone needs an SUV, not everyone can get by with a compact.

Do you need to type to program?

That was the question raised (again) by the news of AppInventor. A visual environment to create applications for the Android.

When reading responses to a blog post I came across one that, I hope tongue in cheek, ranted about how to be a developer you need to type code.

The point is that to be a developer you need to write everything yourself, not taking from anybody else's code. Quite a funny response, but just in case someone takes it at face value, here is a summary of my thoughts:

If you are using a high level language then you are using someone else's libraries. Even if you are programming in assembler.

When coding is based on someone else's code snippets it is called progress.

Computer Programming is directing the computer to perform a task, whether you do it typing code or moving blocks is irrelevant.

A good programmer knows how to meet the requirements (make the program do what it is supposed to do), in an elegant way (Clean code that is easy to maintain) with the end user in mind (Eliminating barriers for the users to be productive) and in the most efficient manner (Using the resources judiciously).

Yes, someone will still need to write the low level code and libraries. Hopefully to be reused by other programmers that create the end user applications. The main difference between the two will be the area of expertise and who their end user is.

Alternatives to full MS Office

Today I read the news that MS will release a limited/ad-based version of MS Office to be bundled with new computers.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/starter/

I don't think that they would have done that hadn't it be for all the users that get frustrated with the "trialware" installed in their computers and opt for alternatives

I know. I've advised several people to install Free applications when their MS Office trial version expires.

For years the MS apologists have been contending that the alternatives weren't good enough because every user needed the advanced features of MS Office. Now even MS is accepting that most users do not need that, and they can do well enough in a limited functionality version.

This means: They've now lost that argument.

This change in strategy from MS gives us, FLOSS advocates, new arguments when explaining Free software on top of the existing arguments of open formats and code

Here are some of them for you to freely use:

• MS Office starter only comes with new computers. Free alternatives can be installed in any computer ;


• MS Office starter shows adds. Free alternatives do not;


• MS Office starter tracks your usage to allow for targeted advertisement. Free alternatives do not ;


• MS Office starter has limited functionality by design. Free alternatives are constantly evolving and improving ;


• MS Office starter does not include all the Office tools. Some free alternatives include the tools missing, including presentations and email clients ;


• MS Office starter has limited functionality but is not light. Some free alternatives are designed to be small and fast, e.g. Abiword and Gnumeric are designed to be light while providing some functionality not available in MS Office starter.

If you reached this page looking for MS Office and want to know what the alternatives are, just ask me. Meanwhile, here are some of the alternatives I've mentioned:

• OpenOffice


• IBM Lotus Symphony


• Abiword


• Gnumeric


• Lyx

I see it as a good thing that MS felt enough pressure to strike back. What is not good is that they'll use their market dominance to force it on new computers but that's fodder for another post.

They are no longer laughing and they stopped fighting it.

This past weekend I attended the Toronto Code Camp. A free conference organized by people active in the .NET community in Toronto.

I had a great time and here is why: The conference was well organized, The venue was quite appropriate, The topics where relevant and the speakers top notch presenters; and most importantly, no sales pitches, just good information and code.

There was one aspect in particular that caught my attention: There were a lot of references to Free an Open Source Software and Open Standards; and all of them praising them.

Up until a couple of years ago the only references I heard in this kind of conferences were pejorative or about not-so-open "standards".

This time, all the presenters I saw were using either Chrome or Firefox.
I attended a presentation on HTML5 where the presenter showed how the FLOSS browsers were more compliant with standards compared to IE8/9; and another presentation about JQuery where the scripts were debugged using Firebug.

Most of the presentations were focused on Microsoft's proprietary technologies but there were also presentations about HTML5, Jquery, Open Data, IronPython and DotNetNuke (See foot note).

To me, this indicates that the hard work of all the people that participate in Free and Open Source initiatives is paying off and paving the way for main stream developers to realize the benefits of open source and, eventually, of Free software.

So the laughing part seems over. They are still fighting but now they are also embracing. Eventually they will fully realize that the FLOSS model is better.

Note: I am sure we can have a good discussion about what is open and what is not, but at least I see things going slowly in the right direction.

Solving the systems integration problem

Solving the systems integration problem is more than putting the tools and plans in place as suggested in this blog

Smarter Integration in Seven Steps

I don't think that the people that are in the position of doing something, do not want to improve integration; but all that planning, aligning and consulting can go just so far.

In my own experience the main failure is with training. But training all the people to follow the standard and use the tools appropriately is expensive and takes time, which is the same as saying that it requires "senior commitment".

Just throwing in the tools because the vendor or consultant can make the pitch, may work for one project; but that's not what integration is all about. Every current staff member must be trained, every new recruit must be trained, not just the people that work on the initial "integration" project.

Re-thinking the Ubuntu/Yahoo deal

When I first heard of this deal my reaction was "so what?", Ubuntu either gets money from one private company or another.

I even read a comment that said ""this would seem to mean that Microsoft will be paying people for using Ubuntu.". This due to the fact that Yahoo is now a front for Bing.

That was the comment that made me think. At first blush it seems that that will be the case. Get money from Microsoft to support a competing product.

What I realized later was that it is the other way around! Microsoft will get money from hits coming from Ubuntu. Out of that, a small portion will go to Ubuntu.

This means that Ubuntu will be making money for Microsoft so in a very direct way, supporting the development of Windows and other proprietary software.

Google may not be the beacon of purity they want to portrait but at least they support Free software. They support the Summer of code, a Linux derivative, Free software Conferences and many other Free software initiatives.

Am I missing something here? How does this deal with Yahoo makes sense?

Has the market rejected The Linux Desktop?

That seems to be the premise for the following article:

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/hiner/?p=3372&tag=nl.e550

Here is my point by point response:

It’s still too much of a pain:
Compatibility should be the vendor's realm. To pass the buck to the OS then the device spec should be open. For some vendors this would be unconscionable.

The divide and fail strategy:
First: Linux is not an OS, it's a kernel. Second: The problem is trying to measure success based on proprietary goals. The goal of FLOSS is to be Free. There are actually many other contexts in life where being free is more of a hassle but we still prefer it. e.g. uniforms eliminate the "need" to think what you are going to wear. Does that make them better for everyone?

Not enough innovation:
"The primary value proposition for Linux is that it’s just as good as Windows"
Wrong premise. The primary value proposition of a FLOSS operating system is its Freedom.

There is innovation although it happens in bits and pieces and components that you don't really see. They are transparent to the user. Here are some examples
- Software repositories
- The free desktop specification
- The compiz desktop
- Desktop folders on KDE (easy to access most used folders)
- Print to PDF from any application

I agree that there are many people doing the Windows copycat. Why do they do it? because they can. It's their freedom and their right. There is no right answer. Sometimes true innovation causes confusion as people tend to resist change.

Businesses want someone to blame:
With Linux they can, there is RedHat, Novel, Mandriva, Canonical and many other vendors that will stand up for the FLOSS OS they sell. Many FLOSS software has professional support, actually that's usually the business model for free software. There is a real drive to provide support as no one is ever "captive client" as it happens with proprietary software.

Summary: The market hasn't "rejected it" it doesn't know the benefits as people keep trying to put the benefits in terms of proprietary software. I guess the problem is not with the product but with the "marketing".

In the end "FLOSS" is a counterbalance to proprietary software and formats. A way to free users from vendor and format lock in. That's what, in my view, makes it better. Once users understand that the current lock-ins don't have to be "normal" they'll realize that there are alternatives.

Karmic Koala: Who's to blame for the issues found by early adopters?

Someone at my LUG's email list pointed to this article:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/11/03/karmic_koala_frustration/

This is not a response or rebuttal to that article as it seems to be quite objective reporting on facts. This is instead a reflection on why being early adopters and expecting perfection is an utopia.

I read the article and it gave a clue of why these issues are popping up:

"Early adopters tend to be the most technical of the technical."

As part of the community and early adopters we should share part of the blame:

First:
There was time to test the alphas, betas and RCs. I'm sure the developers do not have access to all the different combinations of hardware out there. Linux is a community effort. It is only by contributing with testing that we can ensure the release will come out cleaner.

Even other companies with huge resources have extensive pre-release beta programs and beta testers take it upon themselves to improve those companies software.

Second:
It is not common sense, but it is common professional practice that with ANY software for a production environment (This would include your primary desktop) you either:
- test the pre-release versions and felt comfortable before upgrading or
- you wait until other people found the issues and hope you don't have a unique one.

In both scenarios you make every effort to have a way to roll back the change (e.g. data backups or even OS partition image)

Another common practice is to have your production systems at version n-1 and a test system at the level you are planning to move next.

Being early adopters the "most technical of the technical", you'd think that they either contributed testing the pre-release versions or at least tried it in a separate partition before rendering their main system unusable.

So, if you are technical: don't wait to test and report issues, you may uncover something the developers don't know or you may have a clue on something which is baffling the developers.

If you are not comfortable with this either because you are not technical enough or don't have time to test, then keep using version n-1 until most of the issues of the latest version have been resolved.

I do think that Canonical should be clearer on this and, on the downloads page, advise non technical users to use the LTS version. After all, non technical users don't know about the good technical practices I mentioned before.

Canonical's part of the blame is removing the link to download the LTS.

Software Freedom day 2009

Software Freedom day was celebrated world wide on Saturday September 19.

I was fortunate to be able to participate as a volunteer speaker at the event organized by the working centre in Kitchener.

I presented three sessions:

What are we celebrating
In this presentation I walked through some of the current rights and freedoms regarding digital content. The ones we currently have and give for granted as well as some of the existing artificial barriers to enjoy those rights.

Click here to download the impress presentation or click on the presentation to view it on-line.



Don't be afraid of the command line
The main purpose of this presentation is to make users feel more comfortable reading and understanding commands provided by other people as well as using the command line more effectivelly.

Click here to download the impress presentation or click on the presentation to view it on-line.



Linux for Windows users
This presentation shows some of the core differences between Windows and Linux which, when not well understood, become "annoyances" and entry barriers for adoption.

This presentation is not meant to bash Windows in any way or to glorify Linux, but (hopefully) an objective and practical comparison.

Click here to download the impress presentation or click on the presentation to view it on-line.



Hopefully you will be able to attend a local event next year.

eBoks, the great promisse

What a fantastic technology full of promises and advantages. It has the potential to offer unlimited access to books, allow annotations and reorganizations that would help the students, lighten the backpack load, save trees. What a future!

Unfortunately DRM has shown that there are risks, huge risks.

When I was a kid, students in higher grades would regularly sell their books to students in lower grades. Win-win, One student recouped a portion of the cost for new books, the other student saved on books. It was before widespread recycling so less paper to the landfill. You could also borrow a book for a few days if yours was lost or only needed it as supporting reference for a paper.

If we are not careful, eBooks may do more harm than good if DRM is imposed on them. If we cannot share books, borrow them, even deface them in creative ways.

Privacy may suffer If we leave tracks of who read which book. Censorship can easily get to Orwell's 1984 levels where something may disappear from books at the whim of the publisher or government. Look no further to Amazon's Kill switches

The dystopia presented by Richard Stallman in his "The right to read" short story illustrates very well one of these risks.

Yes, eBooks are full of promises that I would like to see realized. But maybe for that to happen we will have to fight an uphill battle.