journalism

10/31/2000

Dave Farquhar General , , , , , , , , , , ,

I know there’s a word for this
I know ’cause we’ve all at some time said it
like when we were little kids
we’d fight each other ’til someone would give in
and you’d make him tell you ‘uncle’
  –Aimee Mann, “I Know There’s a Word” (Whatever, 1993)

Those lyrics came to mind the instant I read this.  My talkback is #22. There’s little point in reproducing any of it here.

I had a run-in with Mr. Darren (I recognize his style) the summer before last. Typical story Jerry tells. Jerry talks about Apple attack dogs who leap on anyone who dares write anything negative about Apple. Same principle here. Eventually you reach the point where you get sick of it and therefore don’t write anything at all about the subject to avoid the attack dogs.

The ignorance these people display about how computer journalism and the computer industry itself operate is unbelievable. Is it so unusual to learn something about a subject before opening your mouth about it?

This kind of crap makes me glad that now I’m not writing a book about Linux and Windows that might actually suggest that some people might have reason to run Windows. Oh, hell. I’ll go ahead and say it. Attention zealots: You know what software your beloved O’Reilly uses to write and edit its manuscripts? Microsoft Word!

On to a more pleasant subject. Good thing there’s a whole lot more to life than just computers. A friend called me up and told me to make sure I picked up the November issue of Vanity Fair because of a brief Aimee Mann/Michael Penn feature in it, plus Elvis Costello’s Top 500 recommended CDs. Good stuff. The issue kept me distracted from my article (due ASAP) for the better part of an hour.

Elvis’ best line: “As for the hit records of today, maybe some of them will sound just fantastic in 20 years’ time. It’s your life. So! No Marilyn, Korn, Puffy, Eddie Money–sorry, Kid Rock–Limp Bizkit, Ricky, Britney, Backstreet Boys, etc., etc.”

Here here!

Mail later. Probably. Assuming I bother.

It’s later. In March of 1999, Jerry was having some or another Linux problem, he got mail-bombed, and I sent him a letter, addressing him but also the Linux zealotry, asking, “What do you want? Do you want to be a punk computer like the Amiga, that no one uses? Repeat after me: Criticism of Linux is not a personal attack on me.” Jerry printed it, the result was a lot of mail.

One of them was this letter, to which I started writing a response but never got around to finishing because I couldn’t figure out what he wanted from me. This is, I’m pretty certain, the same “Darren” who wrote the “Jerry Pournelle finally admits he’s a Microsoft shill” headline at Linuxtoday.

I believe that what he and others like him are calling for is not journalism, nor is it editorial (which is where you call it like you see it–technically, that’s what Jerry Pournelle does. He’s a columnist, not a journalist) but rather, sheer advocacy.

I present it here. Opinions welcome–the mail link’s to the left, and you can leave comments by clicking on the skull icon at the end of the message (that’s what that’s for–I just haven’t gotten around to changing it).

From: Darren [SMTP:PCTech1018@netscape.net]Sent: Thursday, March 11, 1999 11:09 AM
Subject: RE: Your letter on Chaos Manor

Dave,

You asked the question “What do Linux Users want?”.

We want ACCURATE reporting.  This does not mean that we do not accept negative commentary.  This means that we are sick and tired of people with obvious Microsoft slants propagating unsubstantiated FUD while claiming journalistic objectivity.

Jerry Pournelle has a long history of being pro-microsoft.  His negative comments about Linux have a history of being based in ignorance. When he first started working with Linux and complaining about the lack of usability of Linux, he hadn’t even gotten a Linux system up and running. Why does he want Linux to continue to exist? So that Microsoft will continue to improve and dominate. These are demonstrable facts.

Journalists have continually spread anti-Linux FUD from Microsoft most often without any basis in fact. Until recently, the “difficult to use” argument was the predominant position. KDE, FVWM and other “easy-to-use” interfaces have existed for YEARS. This FUD has only recently been dying off after Microsoft’s demonstration of Caldera in court. There is the “lack of support” FUD argument. This FUD is finally dying off now that IBM, HP, Compaq, et al, have joined in the Linux “support” bandwagon. What is really ironic is that they are simply repackaging and using the same support mechanisms that have existed since the introduction of Linux 1.0 in 1994. Now we have a concentration of the “lack of applications” FUD. As more people become aware of HOW to use the sites such as www.linuxapps.com and www.metalab.unc.edu, this argument will also become apparent for the FUD that it is.

What do Linux users want? We want techno-journalists who do more than simply repeat the latest FUD out of Redmond.  They claim to have a certain level of expertise in the technical arena, but are most often only successful at demonstrating their own ignorance.

You obviously feel that we have been out of line in our treatment of certain journalists.  Would you care to give me an example of negative Linux reporting that was accurate from Jesse Berst, Jerry Pournelle or Ben Elgin? How about you give me any example at all from ANY journalist?

I am confident that I will be able to take any example you give me and show you how it is slanted, inaccurate, and not worthy of being published by professional journalists.

I do not intend this to be a flame mail, I just want to do my part to kill the bad journalism.

Regards,
Darren

I also have some (very lengthy) mail from someone who I believe is taking a much more constructive approach, or at least whose criticisms are much more valid. That should appear soon.

Mac data recovery

Dave Farquhar Macintosh , , ,

Interesting day yesterday. I talked with my agent about where I’ll be writing next. There’s a UK magazine editor who is expressing interest in my work. We’ll see where that goes. My college degree is in journalism, and my field of emphasis was in magazine editing and publishing, so writing for computer magazines doesn’t seem foreign to me at all. I actually have been published before in computer magazines, but the last time was in 1997, and the time before that was in 1991. And I think the UK attitude towards technology is a bit more sensible than the US attitude–the UK seems more interested in making the most of what they have, as opposed to the US philosophy of replacing right away. (My English, Scottish and Irish ancestry must be showing through right about now.) So I like the idea of writing for magazines in the UK.
Due to my weak wrists, magazine writing is probably better suited for me at this point anyway.

Just don’t expect me to move to Manchester, England right away. (Of course I’d choose Manchester. That’s where the good music comes from. Joy Division, New Order, Joy Division, The Smiths, Joy Division, Crispy Ambulance, Joy Division…)

More emergency Mac procedures. It should be noted that what I stated about dual G4s not booting off the current utilities CDs also applies to other new models, such as the iMac DV and the G4 Cube (assuming you’re one of the 12 people who bought one).

Unfortunately, my tip for yesterday won’t help you if the machine is already in service and you can’t take it down for a reformat and reinstall. What to do then? Go ahead and copy (once again, DO NOT INSTALL) the contents of your utilities CDs to the hard drive. When you need to run them, boot off your MacOS 9 installation CD. Assuming your drive isn’t damaged to the point of being unreadable by the OS, you can then launch and run the full battery of utilities programs to get the machine back up and running.

If your filesystem is damaged to the point of being unreadable, your best resort is to take out the hard drive, put it in a Mac that is working, and run DiskWarrior, then if that doesn’t bring it back from the dead, run Tech Tool Pro’s volume recover. (Unfortunately, I’ve had to do this before–good thing for me that I’m not uncomfortable ripping into the innards of a computer and transplanting pieces into another.) Of course, this trick works better for G4 towers than it does for iMacs.

If it happens to a PowerBook, your best bet is to put the machine into SCSI dock mode (where the machine just emulates an external SCSI hard drive), connect it to a SCSI-equipped Mac, and run repair tools from there. This is also a great way to transport large numbers of files in a pinch. This is much nicer than taking out a PowerBook hard drive.

Ahem. I see Dan Bowman has introduced me as the Daynotes’ “Resident Expert on Macs.” I suppose I qualify as that. But I’m not a Mac zealot. There are things about every computer architecture that drive me up the wall. I’ve had fully multithreaded, pre-emptive multitasking systems since I bought an Amiga in 1991, and frankly ever since then I’ve found it very difficult to live without that. I’m always doing more than one thing at a time, so I don’t think it’s unreasonable at all to expect my computer to juggle a few things. (For a few blissful days in 1992 I had two Amigas, which let me really juggle a lot of things. These days I normally work with at least two networked PCs going, and sometimes as many as six.)

So while I’m no friend of Microsoft, I’ve probably said more critical things of Apple in these pages than I have of Microsoft.

The only computer that I was ever religious about was the Amiga, and to a certain degree I probably still am. That got me absolutely nowhere. Microsoft zealots drive me up the wall. Linux zealots drive me nuts. Anti-Linux zealots drive me even battier. I sympathize with OS/2 zealots, when I run across them, but I won’t join them. They’re machines. Tools. Do you expect me to sing the praises of Craftsman screwdrivers while I’m at it? They’re nice screwdrivers, but hey, I can get work done with a Stanley too…

So… Thanks for the kind introduction, Dan. I guess I just finished it. So if you’re here courtesy of Dan, welcome aboard. I hope you’re not too offended. (Don’t feel bad. I offend everyone at one point or another.)

Why Linus Torvalds is more popular than RMS

Dave Farquhar Linux , , , , , , ,

Quote of the day. This one made me laugh out loud–probably because I have a journalism degree, I’ve seen journalism professors show up for class sloshed, a good number of my friends are journalists, and, technically, I’m a journalist myself.
“I know how journalists work. They drink too much and they search for interesting stories.” –Linus Torvalds, in the Spring 1999 issue of Linux Magazine.

As for Torvalds, his mom, dad, grandfather, sister, and uncle are all journalists. Yikes!

Stallman on the warpath. My chance to be divisive, I guess. As a journalist, I mustn’t shy away from it. Hey, we’re supposed to look for these opportunities. So…

GNU/Linux is a horrible name. Stallman’s efforts should be commended, yes. I believe they have been. Stallman’s not exactly a household name yet, but certainly more people know who he is now than a year ago. If he wants GNU and his Free Software Foundation to be known, he needs to borrow more pages from Eric Raymond, or even better yet, Torvalds.

As an aside, I had a conversation with a friend and one of his friends the other night over coffee, and the whole Linux/Open Source/Free Software/whatever topic came up (probably because he introduced me as, “Dave, my friend who wrote a book about Windows and now he’s writing a book about Linux.”). I was trying to explain Stallman, and finally I just said, “He’s so libertarian he doesn’t believe in capitalism.” She stopped for a minute. “Libertarians don’t believe in capitalism?” Sure they do, usually fanatically so. But capitalism puts certain limits on your liberties, and if those liberties mean more to you than capitalism, you can start to disdain capitalism. It’s strange, but remember, in the 1930s the leaders of Germany, Italy, Japan, and Spain took conservatism to such an extreme that it led to a form of socialism. The boundaries blur at the edges.

End aside. Raymond and Torvalds are better known than Stallman partly because they’re nicer and more reasonable people. Want proof? OK. Here’s an interview with Stallman, here’s one with Torvalds, and here’s one with Raymond.

It’s pretty clear from reading these interviews why Torvalds is the most popular of these guys, and why he’s become a bit of a media darling. Yes, he looks more like the anti-Gates than RMS or Raymond, but there’s more to it than just that: He’s more charismatic, he’s less intellectual (though he’s obviously a brilliant guy, he’s much more apt to laugh or crack a joke than try to convince you he knows more than you do), and he’s considerably more humble. He’s a likable guy. More likeable than Stallman or Raymond, and more likable than Gates.

Harping the GNU/Linux thing isn’t going to accomplish much. People have a hard enough time figuring out what Linux is supposed to be. And where do we draw the line? Sure, Linux isn’t very useful without some set of utilities (and the GNU utilities are the most commonly used). But what about XFree86? That didn’t come from GNU. But if it weren’t for XFree86, very few people would be interested in either GNU or Linux. And what about KDE? Stallman hates KDE because it dares to use the Qt library, which wasn’t always GPL. But it’s largely thanks to KDE that we’re not stuck using the often-convoluted interfaces that shipped with early Linux distributions. Without KDE, there probably wouldn’t have been a GNOME in response. OK, so now we’re up to GNU/Linux/XFree86/KDE. Oh yeah. A lot of the daemons people use with Linux (minor details like Sendmail and BIND–just the building blocks of the Internet, nothing to get worked up about) came not from GNU but from the BSD project. GNU/BSD/Linux/XFree86/KDE, anyone?

This becomes a convoluted mess. Maybe “Linux” isn’t the best name (if we named all OSs after the kernel, Windows 9x would still be called DOS), but it’s the name people recognize. My goal in writing is to communicate as clearly as possible. That means using the popular name.

A makeover for Stallman. I’m already in trouble, so I might as well get in a lot of trouble. We find out early in that interview that Stallman lived in is office for 13 years or something. He had a bed in his office! What, did he sleep there, wake up, code for 16 hours a day, except for breaks for meals and a break for a shower whenever he felt like it? As Torvalds says, journalists look for interesting stories. Here’s an eccentric guy. Let’s find out more about his eccentricism. Find out about the eccentricism, you learn about the dedication. It sounds like this guy just might be more dedicated and fanatic about software than Martin Luther was about Jesus. How can that be?

In fact, Stallman may have logged 16-hour days at the keyboard. He alludes to it in the interview, when he says he suffered carpal tunnel syndrome from too much coding. But he didn’t talk about it.

Stallman has this ridiculous folk song he plays about how hackers need to follow him, and they’ll be free. He alludes to folk music in the interview, how one person can take a song someone took from someone else, and it becomes a rich thing. What if Stallman brought his acoustic guitar to this interview, said, “Like this!” and played his ridiculous song, then said, “Hmm. Maybe not.” A little self-depracating humor works sometimes. Especially when you have a reputation for being pompous and arrogant. Just ask Linus.

People have to have a compelling reason to listen to you. Giving them a bunch of free stuff is a good start, I’ll admit. Though he speaks about word processors in a demeaning manner, which may make some programmers born and bred on text editors stand up and cheer, but I’m not sure I like the tool of my trade looked down upon in that way. I’m sure my mom doesn’t. The tools we need are different from the tools rms needs, and he needs to recognize that.

So, the difference between my mom and me. I have to listen to Stallman, I have to at least feign interest in who he is and what he’s doing (and to be honest, I don’t have to try all that hard) because I’m being paid to write a book that’s almost as much about him and his work as it is about Torvalds and Gates. But why should my mom give a rip about this guy? And therein lies the problem. With years of retraining, my mom could get her job done with a Linux (or better yet, Hurd, so Stallman and GNU can get all the credit) box running GNU Emacs. Hey, it’s a text editor, it’s a Web browser, it’s a programming environment, it’s a dessert topping, it’s a floor wax! And at the end of this retraining, I could then look her in the eye and say, “You’re free.” And you know what she’d tell me? She’d give me a dirty look and tell me it wasn’t worth it.

Stallman’s attitude is, “I’ll sacrifice a little (or a lot of) convenience in order to be free.” Torvalds? He freely admits his mom uses a Mac, his dad uses Windows, and his sister uses Windows. Then he corrects himself. “No, she [his sister] uses Microsoft Works. Windows is nothing more than a program loader to her. She doesn’t care how these computers work.”

I think the contrasting attitudes have a lot to do with why Torvalds feels he has too much attention and Stallman not enough. People more readily identify with Torvalds.

Forever a senior

Dave Farquhar Society

My sister’s in town, and we were out shopping (she tells me what I need, and I go buy it–what was that I said about bachelorhood?) and she suddenly bolted. “Huh?” says I. “Johnson,” she pops her head around the corner again, then bolts.
Suddenly I hear a vaguely familiar voice behind me. “You!” I turn around, and one of my sister’s ex-boyfriends is standing there. He points where he expects to see my sister, “And You!” But she’s nowhere to be found. He shrugs.

“What are you doing here?” he asks.

“I live just up the street,” I say. He gives me a shocked look. My family moved out of St. Louis five years ago, and I was the only one to come back. Evidently no one told him. No biggie. We were always civil, but hey, we ran in different crowds and he was dating my sister and they didn’t part on the best terms.

We got to talking a bit. He finished high school, but none of his brothers did. Some of his friends did, some didn’t. They all got jobs that paid what looked like good money straight off–and still looks like good money, but good money at 22 is very different from good money at 35. We talked a bit about what we were each doing. In his case: “Stuff, here and there.” I was able to infer from other things he said later that he’s working mostly as a mechanic but not holding down any job for very long. He went to a junior college, ended up on academic probation, and got kicked out. (I’m pretty sure I could just show up for the finals for any given class at that particular junior college and stay off academic probation, but that’s just me.)

He asked about me. “Bachelor’s of journalism, 1997, working fixing computers, writing books at night.” He asked if I liked it. I was honest. Books yes, computers no. But once I have two books in print and selling I can ditch the day job. That impressed him–“At least you’ve got a plan to get what you want.”

My sister came out of it a bit shaken. He still looks exactly how he did at 18. But his looks are about all he’s got. Looks and a fast life, dating strippers and Hooters girls and going to strip clubs every other weekend, but it’s no different or better than senior year of high school–except the drinking and strip clubs are legal for him to do now. You know how they say, “forever a senior” when someone dies tragically a few weeks or months before graduation? He’s living that. A life forever looking back, because there’s not much worth looking forward to. And once the looks go…

I can’t say I’m jealous. I told my sister she shouldn’t be either.