unix

The beginning of the end…

Dave Farquhar General

I meant to post this last night. I didn’t. Oh well.
It’s the beginning of the end, one can only hope. Yesterday, Ximian released Evolution 1.0, the long-awaited Outlook workalike for Linux and Unix running GNOME. In a move certain to draw criticism from some camps, Ximian also released a $69 module that allows GNOME to act as an Exchange client. It’s cheaper in larger quantities, of course.

Some people will object to it costing money, others will object to defiling Linux by connecting it to Exchange (and I agree that it’s defiling, but I don’t raise much objection). Remember, Windows 95 steamrolled everything in its path by connecting to anything and everything. Netware was king in those days; it connected well with that, and with everything else imaginable, from Banyan VINES to OS/2. So the more things Linux interoperates with, the better. Ideals have their time and place; this isn’t it.

I’ve been playing around with Evolution 1.0RC2 for the past week and I like it. I’m not an Outlook junkie, never was and never will be, but Evolution is elegant, complete, and easy to learn and use. It does a lot of things I’ll never use, but it’s pretty darn robust, reasonably fast, and a whole lot more secure than Outlook. The other thing I like about it is that it’s not just an Outlook clone; it actually tries to improve on Outlook in places where changes made sense. So if you’re addicted to Outlook but you’ve been bitten by viruses, here’s your out. Get a current Linux distro and download a copy of Evolution. Sneak it onto your corporate network and show it off.

Desktop Linux and the truth about forking

Dave Farquhar Linux , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Desktop Linux! I wanna talk a little more about how Linux runs on a Micron Transport LT. I chose Debian 2.2r3, the “Potato” release, because Debian installs almost no extras. I like that. What you need to know to run Linux on a Micron LT: the 3Com miniPCI NIC uses the 3C59x kernel module. The video chipset uses the ATI Mach64 X server (in XFree86 3.36; if you upgrade to 4.1 you’ll use plain old ATI). Older Debian releases gave this laptop trouble, but 2.2r3 runs fine.
I immediately updated parts of it to Debian Unstable, because I wanted to run Galeon and Nautilus and Evolution. I haven’t played with any GNOME apps in a long time. A couple of years ago when I did it, I wasn’t impressed. KDE was much more polished. I didn’t see any point in GNOME; I wished they’d just pour their efforts into making KDE better. I still wish that, and today KDE is still more polished as a whole, but GNOME has lots of cool apps. Nautilus has the most polish of any non-Mac app I’ve ever seen, and if other Linux apps rip off some of its code, Microsoft’s going to have problems. It’s not gaudy and overboard like Mac OS X is; it’s just plain elegant.

Galeon is the best Web browser I’ve ever seen. Use its tabs feature (go to File, New Tab) and see for yourself. It’s small and fast like Opera, compatible like Netscape, and has features I haven’t seen anywhere else. It also puts features like freezing GIF animation and disabling Java/JavaScript out where they belong: In a menu, easily accessible. And you can turn them off permanently, not just at that moment.

Evolution is a lot like Outlook. Its icons look a little nicer–not as nice as Nautilus, but nice–and its equivalent of Outlook Today displays news headlines and weather. Nice touch. And you can tell it what cities interest you and what publications’ headlines you want. As a mail reader, it’s very much like Outlook. I can’t tell you much about its PIM features, because I don’t use those heavily in Outlook either.

The first time I showed it to an Outlook user at work, her reaction was, “And when are we switching to that?”

If you need a newsreader, Pan does virtually everything Forte Agent or Microplanet Gravity will do, plus a few tricks they won’t. It’s slick, small, and free too.

In short, if I wanted to build–as those hip young whippersnappers say–a pimp-ass Internet computer, this would be it. Those apps, plus the Pan newsreader, give you better functionality than you’ll get for free on Windows or a Mac. For that matter, you could buy $400 worth of software on another platform and not get as much functionality.

Linux development explained. There seems to be some confusion over Linux, and the kernel forking, and all this other stuff. Here’s the real dope.

First off, the kernel has always had forks. Linus Torvalds has his branch, which at certain points in history is the official one. When Torvalds has a branch, Alan Cox almost always has his own branch. Even when Cox’s branch isn’t the official one, many Linux distributions derive their kernels from Cox’s branch. (They generally don’t use the official one either.) Now, Cox and Torvalds had a widely publicized spat over the virtual memory subsystem recently. For a while, the official branch and the -ac branch had different VMs. Words were exchanged, and misinterpreted. Both agreed the original 2.4 VM was broken. Cox tried to fix it. Torvalds replaced it with something else. Cox called Torvalds’ approach the unofficial kernel 2.5. But Torvalds won out in the end–the new VM worked well.

Now you can expect to see some other sub-branches. Noted kernel hackers like Andrea Archangeli occasionally do a release. Now that Marcelo Tosatti is maintaining the official 2.4 tree, you might even see a -ac release again occasionally. More likely, Cox and Torvalds will pour their efforts into 2.5, which should be considered alpha-quality code. Some people believe there will be no Linux 2.6; that 2.5 will eventually become Linux 3.0. It’s hard to know. But 2.5 is where the new and wonderful and experimental bits will go.

There’s more forking than just that going on though. The 2.0 and 2.2 kernels are still being maintained, largely for security reasons. But not long ago, someone even released a bugfix for an ancient 0.-something kernel. That way you can still keep your copy of Red Hat 5.2 secure and not risk breaking any low-level kernel module device drivers you might be loading (to support proprietary, closed hardware, for example). Kernels are generally upward compatible, but you don’t want to risk anything on a production server, and the kernel maintainers recognize and respect that.

As far as the end user is concerned, the kernel doesn’t do much. What 2.4 gave end users was better firewalling code and more filesystems and hopefully slightly better performance. As far as compatibility goes, the difference between an official kernel and an -ac kernel and an -aa kernel is minor. There’s more difference between Windows NT 4.0 SP2 and SP3 than there is between anyone’s Linux 2.4 kernel, and, for that matter, between 2.4 and any (as of Nov. 2001) 2.5 kernel. No one worries about Windows fragmenting, and when something Microsoft does breaks a some application, no one notices.

So recent events are much ado about nothing. The kernel will fragment, refragment, and reunite, just as it has always done, and eventually the best code will win. Maybe at some point a permanent fracture will happen, as happened in the BSD world. That won’t be an armageddon, even though Jesse Berst wants you to think it will be (he doesn’t have anything else to write about, after all, and he can’t be bothered with researching something non-Microsoft). OpenBSD and NetBSD are specialized distributions, and they know it. OpenBSD tries to be the most secure OS on the planet, period. Everything else is secondary. NetBSD tries to be the most portable OS on the planet, and everything else is secondary. If for some reason you need a Unix to run on an old router that’s no longer useful as a router and you’d like to turn it into a more general-purpose computer, NetBSD will probably run on it.

Linux will fragment if and when there is a need for a specialized fragment. And we’ll all be the better for it. Until someone comes up with a compelling reason to do so, history will just continue to repeat itself.

Fide et fortitudine

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

Fide et fortitudine. That’s the motto on my family crest. It seems appropriate. If I didn’t have fidelity and fortitude, I wouldn’t be making this post, because I wouldn’t care. I’d talk about how to use Samba and Ghostscript and your favorite free Unix to set up a print server that spits out Acrobat-compatible PDF files or something.
I guess it’s an indication of how my readership has changed over the past year that I only got one e-mail message like this. A year ago I wouldn’t have dared write on the subject I wrote about Friday, for fear of alienating readership. Well, I alienated them anyway, somehow, some way, and in the process picked up a bunch more, so who cares, right?

I’ve had three days (or is it four?) to formulate a careful response. I didn’t take that much time. That says something. Obviously I’m still OK with what I wrote.

Anyway… I never know how to present reader mail, which is why I prefer people use the comments system here–I’ll call attention to the comments when there’s something good there. Speaking of which, be sure to check out yesterday’s comments. There’s some good stuff there, and I managed to change the subject just slightly by telling a story of how I gained some popularity for my writings in high school.

Back to the subject at hand. I guess I’ll turn this into a dialogue, even though it wasn’t a dialogue. Daynoter Matt Beland took issue with Friday’s post. So he wrote me.

MB: Hi Dave,

Like you, I get asked about religion a lot, mostly by family members. They don’t seem to understand how I can work in “that industry” where so many of the workers are not Christian (or an acceptable variation, such as Muslim or Jewish.) I personally am not particularly religious, of any flavor, despite having been raised Roman Catholic. I do, however, have a number of friends who are religious of all types, and I have to say you’re being extremely unfair in your comparisons. I mean no criticism of Christianity or you personally, but it’s not a good idea to be critical of other religions without more information.

DF: Now you’re painting with awfully broad strokes to call Islam or Judaism an “acceptable variation” of Christianity. Neither of them would appreciate that label. I’m sure you already know this, but for the benefit of those who may not, here goes.

Christianity is derived from Judaism (Jesus was, after all, a Jewish rabbi). Islam is the newest of the three but it, like Judaism, traces its origin back to the patriarch Abraham. Abraham had two sons, Ishmael and Isaac. Isaac gave rise to Israel and Judaism; Ishmael gave rise to the Arabic nations and ultimately to Islam. Yes, the figure that Christianity calls “God the Father” is Judaism’s Yahweh and Islam’s Allah. Islam regards Jesus Christ as a prophet, but not the Great Prophet (that title belongs to Muhammed), while Judaism regards Jesus as little more than another heretic.

But your point wasn’t to write a broad explanation of Judaism/Islam/Christianity, just as mine wasn’t to write a broad explanation of pagan religions and the occult.

MB: The first thing I usually show those members of my family who ask is from the Jargon File, if you’ve not seen it before. In Appendix B, “A Portrait of J. Random Hacker”, there’s a section on religion. This is what it says:

“Religion

Agnostic. Atheist. Non-observant Jewish. Neo-pagan. Very commonly, three or more of these are combined in the same person. Conventional faith-holding Christianity is rare though not unknown.

Even hackers who identify with a religious affiliation tend to be relaxed about it, hostile to organized religion in general and all forms of religious bigotry in particular. Many enjoy `parody’ religions such as Discordianism and the Church of the SubGenius.

Also, many hackers are influenced to varying degrees by Zen Buddhism or (less commonly) Taoism, and blend them easily with their `native’ religions.

DF: Eastern religions blend nicely with one another and with Middle Eastern and Western religions, almost by design. There are neo-Christian sects (such as the Moonies and Hare Krishna) that do the same thing and have been doing so for longer than computers have been available to the masses.

MB: There is a definite strain of mystical, almost Gnostic sensibility that shows up even among those hackers not actively involved with neo-paganism, Discordianism, or Zen. Hacker folklore that pays homage to `wizards’ and speaks of incantations and demons has too much psychological truthfulness about it to be entirely a joke.”

DF: Indeed. And some Christians do take offense, rightly or wrongly. I know of Christians who pick Linux over one of the BSD Unixes strictly because of the Chuck the Daemon mascot, even though FreeBSD is the demonstrably superior OS under many circumstances. Personally, I could live without the pentagram on the Sorcerer Linux logo, but I don’t throw a fit about it because Gentoo Linux is a lot better anyway.

With computers, people can, and do, try anything. I have seen people resort to witchcraft to get things working. And in one case I’ve seen it work.

People will also tend to explain away something that’s hard to understand by drawing parallels to something else that’s hard to understand.

MB: First, let’s look at this part: (quoting Friday’s piece).

> Someone sent me a nice explanation for it. It’s a little longwinded, so
>I’ll summarize and paraphrase. It said we’ve been telling God we don’t want
>Him. And God’s a perfect gentleman, so when He’s told He’s not wanted, He
>butts out. We’ve told God we don’t want Him in our schools. We’ve told Him
>we don’t want Him in our courts. We don’t want Him in our government. We
>don’t want Him in our business. We don’t want Him in our streets. We don’t
>want Him on our televisions and movie screens. And each time we’ve told Him
>to get lost, he’s sorrowfully complied.

No, we don’t want your God in our schools. We don’t want Him in our movies, books, newspapers, streets, or most especially our government. That’s not because we’re all evil, it’s not because we don’t have faith, and it’s not because we don’t necessarily believe. It’s because we don’t all believe in the same things. No matter who you choose to represent as “God” in schools, in government, in any public forum, you’ll be leaving someone out.

I’ve fought hard to keep “God” out of schools. I’ve not fought to prevent schools from holding non-lead “Periods of Reflection” where students may pray or meditate as they like. What’s the difference? The students have the choice. If you as a parent have raised your child to be a true Christian, then they will probably pray and make you proud. However, the child in the next row who’s Buddist or neo-pagan should have the right to make *their* parents proud, too. No one has asked you to keep God out of your life, or your home, or your family. We encourage that. But your God is your choice. My God is not your choice. It’s very easy for the christians to say “but we just want everyone to share in the glory of our God” – the problem is, the rest of the world remembers that christians have not always offered others a choice. And the current refrain of “you’ve pushed God from our lives” sounds remarkably the same – you don’t want to offer others a choice.

DF: We’ve gone to the extreme of teaching relative morality where there no longer is any right and wrong, only what works for you. The end result? A couple dozen evil men hijacked planes and crashed them into buildings (or tried) because it worked for them and they could use a twisted form of Islam to justify it. So now we’re finally starting to think about right and wrong.

Should we teach Christianity in the schools? Not necessarily. Should a Christian group be allowed to assemble just like a model train club could? Absolutely. Unfortunately that hasn’t always been permitted, freedom of speech and freedom of assembly be damned.

I never said no one else should have a choice. I talked about my personal choice and gave my justification for it. And yes, it bothers me that some of the 17-year-olds I know who would like to start up a Fellowship of Christian Athletes chapter in their school cannot, on grounds of Church and State.

And I disagree that we can’t teach morality. You can boil the world religions down to a set of moral principles that won’t offend anyone, except possibly those who refuse to keep them. Then again, Benjamin Franklin wanted them taught, even though he wasn’t willing to keep them in their entirety.

I would also think that if you don’t want God in the movies or on TV, if you have no problems with Harry Potter, then you’re practicing a double standard.

MB: Love your God. Rejoice in your God. But love your neighbor, as well, and allow them to worship the God of their choice.

DF: Again: I never said no one else should have a choice. I talked about my personal choice and gave my justification for it. And you seem to have missed the biggest point: Anyone who follows Christianity ends up inadvertently fulfilling the requirements, as far as is humanly possible, of any other religion. And, unlike any other interpretation of God, this one doesn’t leave you to your own devices to fulfill what’s required of you. So tell me who has the kinder God? But He doesn’t force Himself on anyone, and neither do I believe in forcing Him on anyone. Indeed, you can trace many of Christianity’s problems to it (or a different form of it) being forced on people who don’t want it (or who wanted a different form).

MB: Next: (again, quoting Friday)
>And I believe in the Holy Spirit. I can’t explain the Holy Spirit. But I’ve
>seen His work, I’ve felt His presence, and yeah, it’s weird. But powerful. I
>know some of the appeal of Satanism and of pagan religions like Wicca–most
>of the appeal–is power. They don’t compare to Holy Spirit power. And
>personally, I’d much rather go to a God who’s willing to look bad by saying
>no when He knows what I’m asking for is bad for me or someone else, rather
>than going to a god who’ll give me whatever I ask for to ensure I come back
>for more. God’s a whole lot smarter than me, and has a much better
>perspective than me. I’m better off when I defer to Him.

No. None of this is correct. It’s what most Christians belive, but unfortunately that doesn’t make it true. Many of my friends and coworkers are neo-pagan, Satanist, and so on. “Neo-pagan” is a very broad term, including Wicca, Druidism, Animism, Witchcraft (which is NOT Wicca), and other variations. I personally know members of each of the above religions, and my own curiosity has lead me to investigate all of those and many others as well. Please note that Satanism is not considered a Pagan religion, either by the pagans or by the satanists.

DF: I didn’t state that paganism and Satanism were related, other than that they have similar appeal. That’s what the extra “and of” is there for. Had I said, “appeal of pagan religions like Wicca and Satanism,” then you’d have a case. That doesn’t mean the same thing as “appeal of Satanism and of pagan religions like Wicca.”

MB: Let’s tackle the hardest one first. Satanism. Please note that Satanism is not considered a Pagan religion, either by the pagans or by the satanists. Christians have absolutely no doubt about this one – they’re evil. Worshipping Satan!

The first thing the followers of this religion will explain is that it’s simply not true. Christians believe in Satan, the fallen angel who defied God. They are not Christian, they do not believe in hell or heaven, and they do not worship the christian Satan – despite movies and what they consider christian propaganda to the contrary.

Here are some basic facts:
* They do not worship a living deity.
* Major emphasis is placed on the power and authority of the individual
Satanist, rather than on a god or goddess.
* They believe that “no redeemer liveth” – that each person is their own
redeemer, fully responsible for the direction of their own life.
* “Satanism respects and exalts life. Children and animals are the purest
expressions of that life force, and as such are held sacred and precious…”

The founder of the Church of Satan is a very controversial figure; his primary motivation appeared to be financial, and as such many followers of the church and of the religion do not regard him to be a true Satanist. They use the church, however, since it provides a legal framework and foundation for their beliefs and legal (if not social) protection from persecution.

DF: There are at least two forms of Satanism. The Satanism of Anton LaVey (The Church of Satan) has more to do with hedonism than the Biblical figure of Satan. That’s the Satanism you describe, and the Satanism that is best-known. Supposedly LaVey once stated he wrote the Satanic Bible as a joke but it caught on. I don’t know if that was ever verified, and I remember he died back in 1997 or 1998 so he’s not around to answer any questions anymore. I am aware that they state their Satan isn’t the same as the Judeo-Christian Satan.

There’s also another, darker religion that calls itself Satanism. Most people think it only exists in the movies, but in the small town in Southeastern Missouri I lived in for five years, they wish the Satanists practiced LaVey’s religion. These people don’t hold life in particularly high regard, either animals or humans. They drink blood, systematically break the Biblical Ten Commandments, and practice sacrifice. Sometimes they attempt human sacrifice. This dates back almost 15 years, but a Satanic group in that town had a hit list and at least two of my former classmates were on it. One of them opened her locker one day and found a cat skull in it along with a note that stated, simply, “You’re next.”

This was not Christian propaganda. I knew these girls. I went to school with them and to church with them. To my knowledge it was never publicized aside from their families asking people they knew to pray for them.

Maybe there are similar stories in Christian propaganda. I don’t go looking for that kind of stuff so I don’t know. Most of the Christians I know, sadly, are too busy beating each other up to pay attention to that sort of thing.

If Anton LaVey didn’t want to be associated with this subculture, he should have called his movement something else. If today’s Church of Satan doesn’t want to be associated with this subculture, it can always do what the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints did in order to differentiate itself from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (aka the Mormons): Change its name.

LaVey also didn’t do anyone any favors by portraying the Christian Satan in movies, but that just adds fuel to the argument that his motivation was money, or a joke, or both.

MB: The most common Pagan religion today is Witchcraft, including the subset of Wicca. I know many witches, including some who identify themselves as Wiccans. They do not ride brooms, they do not wear black (other than as a fashion choice – most actually wear Earth-toned clothing, brown, grey, green, etc.) They don’t fly, light candles with their breath, or anything else you may have seen in the movies.

They do, however, believe in limits.

DF: I’ve known a number of wiccans, and at times considered them friends. I even built a computer for one a few years ago. We’ve lost contact but I don’t hold anything against them. They dressed more or less like I do, hung out at a lot of the same places I did, could only fly in an airplane, and at least one of them didn’t even own a broom.

MB: (Again, quoting Friday):
>And
>personally, I’d much rather go to a God who’s willing to look bad by saying
>no when He knows what I’m asking for is bad for me or someone else, rather
>than going to a god who’ll give me whatever I ask for to ensure I come back
>for more.

Um. No. The first rule (as was explained to me by the first witch friend I aquired when I expressed interest in the matter) is the Threefold Law:

“Ever mind the Rule of Three
Three times what thou givest returns to thee
This lesson well, thou must learn
Thee only gets what thou dost earn!”

This is interpreted that any spell, any action of any kind, which affects anyone, will return to you three times. This eliminates any possibility of “black magic”, because the results of the spell will supposedly return to you with three times the power of the original spell. It’s also the belief that any spell you cast with positive effects for others will be returned threefold – so it’s better to give, for by giving, you will receive.

Also, spells and requests do *not* always work. You only receive what you request from a Deity (usually “the Goddess”, but there are others) if it meets the following basic conditions:

1. It is truly your heart’s desire, rather than a simple “I want this” – you
have to want it badly enough to accept the cost, because everything has a
cost.
2. It has to be something which is beneficial to you and to those around you.
3. The second law – “And it harm none, do what ye will”. It cannot be
something which would harm anyone or anything.

True, Witchcraft (and pagan religions in general, so far as I’ve seen) place more of an onus on the practitioner for their decisions and for life in general. No pagan would ever say “How could God/Goddess/the Gods allow this to happen”, because they don’t believe it works that way. The works of Man are the works of Man, for good or for ill, and preventing evil from the works of Man is also the responsibility of Man. They believe that there is no deity who will make things right – they believe that is their job as human beings. I recently gave one of my team members permission to take a day off so she could attend a Coven meeting to try to repair some of the spiritual damage done by the September 11 attacks. A prayer meeting, if you will, except that instead of asking God to help those who need it, they believe that a part of themselves goes out to all those who need it – and that if enough of them give enough of themselves, they can repair the damage to people’s hearts as much as is good or possible. (I didn’t understand that at first. She explained that they do not want to take away the pain entirely – it should hurt when you lose a loved one, because you’ve truly lost something. If it didn’t hurt, if there was no pain, then there would be no appreciation of the loss. However, they do believe it is also the responsibility of the loved ones who remain to help soften the blow as much as possible.)

Is the appeal power? I don’t know about that. It seems to me, from what I’ve seen and what I’ve read, that the power they believe themselves to have is balanced and more by the responsibility they’re given. They can’t just DO things. They have to accept costs. They have to accept pain. They have to accept that they are responsible for their own actions, and they have a near-contempt for the christian practice of Reconciliation. It’s not any God’s place, they say, to forgive them for their since. Only the people or things they’ve sinned against can do that, and it requires more than a prayer or two – you have to earn it.

DF: What you just described is power. And the forgiveness you just described isn’t much different from Judeo-Christian forgiveness. Unfortunately most Christians don’t celebrate Yom Kippur anymore, but human-to-human reconciliation is what Yom Kippur (Judaism’s Day of Atonement) is all about. Jesus Himself once said that if you’re in the temple offering a sacrifice and you realize your brother (and “your brother” means anyone and everyone) has something against you, leave your sacrifice there and go reconcile with your brother. Reconciliation is more important to God than worship! That’s something not many people seem to know. Merely asking God for forgiveness is only half of it. Some would argue that asking God without asking the other person isn’t true repentance–true repentance is turning from the sin, hating it, and wanting to make it right. Often we only go two for three on that front.

But that does bring up the other big attraction to either Satanism (especially LaVey’s Satanism) and paganism, and one they share with atheism and agnosticism: lack of a central moral authority. You’re accountable to yourself, and to the people you want to be close to, but that’s it.

I also remember reading in a philosophy class an essay titled, “Why Women Need The Goddess.” It was written by a feminist who argued that no woman should practice any religion that used male pronouns in conjunction with a deity. So maybe there are people who worship “The Goddess,” for purely feminist reasons, but there again, the motivation is partly power, although in this case it would be political power more than spiritual power.

MB: There’s more, there’s a lot more. Most christians don’t bother to look. For all the preaching about God’s love and preventing evil in the world, the most common trait I see among christians (unfortunately) is intolerance, followed closely by hatred and fear. That team member who wanted to attend a coven? She was afraid to approach me because she didn’t know if I was christian or not. She was afraid that if I was, I might do something – fire her, maybe, or just make life so hellish she had no choice but to quit.

DF: A lot of Christians don’t bother to look at their own religion, but Christians don’t have a monopoly on that. Any religion that isn’t being persecuted has plenty of complacent practitioners. Persecution tends to weed those out, which is why persecution tends to make a religion grow, rather than stomping it out. If you want to destroy a religion, subsidize it. It worked splendidly in Europe. First it twisted Christianity beyond recognition, leading to atrocities like the Crusades, then it eventually reduced it to a government-subsidized subculture. Today there are more Christians in Africa than there are in Europe.

You also see plenty of hatred, intolerance, and fear in many Muslim sects. You see it in Orthodox Judaism as well. If the tables were turned, you’d see it in the pagan religions too. It’s called human nature.

Am I being intolerant here? Some might see it that way. But I didn’t set out to tell people why they should be what I am. I set out to tell people why I am what I am. If they want what I’ve got, great, I’ll answer any question, any time of the day. If they want to leave it, that’s their choice.

MB: At first, I thought she was being paranoid. The only reason she felt comfortable talking to me about it was that I commented on a piece of jewelry she wore which signified witchcraft, and I did so favorably and in a way which showed I knew what it meant. Then I noticed a few things:

“I don’t think witchcraft is a religion. I would hope the military officials would take a second look at the decision they made.” Who said that? Gearge W. Bush, while still Governor of Texas, in regards to a decision by the military to allow soldiers to practice Witchcraft as their religion.

The second was a quote on the http://www.religioustolerance.org/ website. They’re a Canadian group who have essays and information on every religion, lined up equally. They’re no more critical of christianity than they are of any other. Apparently, this makes them unpopular with christians for some
reason.

DF: Insecure people in any group tend to lash out when they feel attacked, whether the attack is justified or not. Christianity as it’s been practiced through the centuries has problems, yes. It always did. The bulk of the New Testament is St. Paul’s criticisms of Christianity as the churches of his day, many of which he founded himself, practiced it. Even when Jesus was alive there were problems. He had a lot of harsh words for the Scribes and Pharisees and Sadducees, but He had plenty of harsh words for His own disciples too.

Don’t project the ravings of a vocal minority on the entire group.

MB: “Neopagan faiths are modern-day reconstructions of ancient Pagan religions from various countries and eras. They experience a high level of discrimination and persecution in North America. They are rarely practiced in public for reasons of safety.”

Who’s doing the persecuting? Simple statistics says it’s not other pagans –

“About Christian Faith Groups We treat Christianity in greater detail than other religions, simply because about 88% of North Americans identify themselves with that religion. Christians outnumber the next largest organized religions by about 40 to 1 in the U.S. and Canada. We are not in any way implying that Christianity is superior or inferior to other religions.”

Please. Worship whomever you like. Write about whatever you like. But label fiction as fiction, or else write the truth when you talk about religion.

DF: Disagreement with or misinterpretation of something doesn’t make it fiction. As far as I can tell, you objected to my statement that paganism’s appeal is power (then you went on to describe power as I definie it), and you misread a clause so you thought that I was calling Satanism a pagan religion, which I was not. I glossed over a few things that you would have preferred I talk about in more detail. Neither does that make it fiction, or false.

Or maybe you just misread my intentions. Hopefully this explanation clears that up.

I can’t tell if you want me to come out and say that any other religion is OK to practice. I won’t come out and say that–that would make me a Unitarian Universalist, which I am not. I won’t try to stop anyone from practicing something else. That’s all I ask of anyone else, and that’s all the Constitution asks, so that’s all I’m going to give or ask for.

Software stuff I forgot about

Dave Farquhar General , , , , ,

I’m hoping someone can help me here. I read a couple of stories this week and can’t find them anymore. They’re fairly significant.
Evil Adobe software. The first involved an Adobe lawsuit. Some outfit was buying Adobe suites, breaking them up, and reselling the components. Adobe sued, saying this violated the click-through license. The court ruled that the reseller never agreed to the click-through license, this constituted a sale even though Adobe defined it as a license, and the vendor wasn’t violating any copyright laws by selling the software CDs and books just like stores that sell used books and music don’t violate the copyrights. The court also questioned whether a click-through license was legally binding anyway.

This story should be very significant. The way around it, of course, is to rent software, which is more profitable anyway. Expect Adobe to make tracks down that path very quickly. Adobe’s software licenses are generally slightly more generous than Microsoft’s (they allow you to install their products on your home PC if your business buys them, something Microsoft no longer allows) but then again Adobe’s the company responsible for jailing Dmitry Sklyarov, so they’re still evil. Maybe not quite as evil as Microsoft, but still evil.

So if you must buy Adobe software, do it smart. Buy the suites–which generally combine three or more Adobe products and generally sell for what two products would sell for seperately–and split them up. Find a friend or coworker to go halvesies with you.

Evil viruses. I’ve been fearing for a couple of months the virus that takes the methods used by Nimda and combines them with oldschool exploits like infecting file shares and e-mailing people in your address book. Such a beast appeared last week, but the stories faded very quickly. Presumably the virus was discovered but never really made it into the wild. The stories I read suggested the virus code was very buggy.

Still, if you’re still reeling from Nimda like I am, take steps to secure your network. Put an antivirus package on your mailserver. Consider blocking access at the DNS level to your local ISPs’ mailservers and free mail providers such as Hotmail to keep users from bringing unchecked mail into your network. Deploy IE 5.5SP2 with all of the current patches. Put Outlook in the Restricted Sites zone and very seriously consider replacing Outlook with something that works right and is secure, such as the Lotus Notes and Domino tag-team. (Exchange always was a Domino wannabe anyway, and not a very good one.) And since keeping your Microsoft software up to date is a royal pain, tell your boss to start thinking about remote deployment software such as Tivoli. Yes, it’s expensive, but it’s cheaper and easier than hiring another one of you and it frees you up to do real work. (My company’s been looking for another one of me for about three years, first so they could afford to get rid of me because I’m not a Microsoft lackey, and now so they can promote me. They’ve never succeeded. Presumably your company would have an equally difficult time finding another one of you.)

Linux in the enterprise. The ultimate solution to this virus crap (and other Windows-related crap) is to get rid of Windows and replace it with Linux, since Linux viruses are extremely rare and almost never damaging. While Linux has security vulnerabilities too, they’re generally more rare than Windows vulnerabilities and a desktop PC often won’t be running the programs that can be exploited. Besides, you are firewalled, aren’t you? If you are, you’re pretty reasonably secure, since in the Unix world, operating systems are operating systems–they don’t try to be operating systems and web browsers and mail clients and everything else.

But what about usability and maintainability? Linux plus KDE is no harder for an end-user to use than a PC or a Mac. Corel WordPerfect Office gives you everything you need to run your business, and secretaries like WordPerfect better than Microsloth Word anyway. Oh, you need Outlook, you say? Fine. Wait a month then. Ximian Evolution is approaching version 1.0, which will bring Outlook functionality to the Linux desktop. And if you don’t want to pay for WordPerfect Office, there’s always StarOffice. (But you can easily afford WP Office with the money you save by not buying Windows licenses anymore.)

So you don’t know anything about fixing Linux if it goes bad? So what? No sane person fixes a Windows installation either. Fixing a troublesome Windows box can easily take half a day, so the best practice is to keep an image of a working configuration, then when the user breaks it, back up user data (usually scattered all over the drive), re-image, then restore the data and be back up and running in an hour. Linux restricts user data to the /home hierarchy, so maintaining an army of Linux boxes is actually considerably easier than maintaining an army of NT boxes. Back up /home and re-image. Or if you’re really smart, you already redirected /home to a server somewhere, in which case all your desktops are now interchangeable. And Linux imaging is much easier than in NT. Linux generally doesn’t care about the motherboard, so if your video, sound, and network cards are identical, your disk images are interchangeable. Often you can get away with changing sound cards too. And if you’re limited to two or three types of NICs (probably Intel EtherExpress Pro and 3Com 90x; most cheapie 10/100 cards are covered by the Realtek 8139, DEC Tulip or NatSemi drivers), you can just statically compile those into the kernel and you’re set–then the video card is all you have to worry about. Running XConfigurator can take care of that in a matter of minutes. So a dead Linux box can be wiped and restored in 30 minutes, easy, during which your user can still be working, either on a vacationing neighbor’s PC or on your PC.

Remember too that a good percentage of NT problems are caused by toy programs users download off the ‘Net, or games or other programs people bring in from home and install. Those toys generally aren’t available for Linux, and since Linux has a low penetration in the home, people aren’t going to be bringing in their Barbie CDs and installing them. So you’re a fool not to think about Linux on the desktop in the enterprise.

Outta here. I’ve got more but I’m pretty much out of time. We’re doing a prayer vigil this weekend, and no fool signed up to lead from 1:00-2:00. When I stay up that late, my mind tends to be at its best, though my emotions tend to be at their worst (I get depressed easily). But since I can be plenty lucid at that hour, this fool signed up to lead. I’ll be back with more tomorrow.

Oh yeah. I have a Web site.

Dave Farquhar General , , , , ,

You ask me how I am
And all I can say is I still exist…
–lyrical snippet I wrote in 1997
Yep, I’m hacked off and moody, and when I get this way, it’s best if I say little more than yeah, I still exist. I know I won’t regret saying or writing that.

BBQ. I know I cut way back on my red meat intake–I may have managed to eat none at all in October, I’m not sure–but I have this fantasy of moving back to Kansas City, buying a house next door to Gates BBQ–no relation to that scumbag Billy Gates in Seattle–setting up an expense account, and eating BBQ three meals a day. BBQ for breakfast? Don’t dis it until you’ve tried it. But make sure it’s real BBQ. Here in St. Louis, restaurants tend to do Memphis-style BBQ, which is where you cook the meat without sauce until it’s good and dried out, then you splash some spicy sauce on it and call it BBQ. Kansas Citians know real BBQ is cooked long, slow, and in sauce. It adds a little flavor and keeps the meat from drying out as much.

Gates three times a day. Sounds like a great solution to any problem. Or at least a nice distraction.

Music. I’ve been listening to a CD my sister sent me by a band called claas-p.jambor. I know nothing about them, because their Web site xeptional.com is a Flash site and I’ve removed that blight from all my PCs, permanently. (Now if I can just get them to quit prompting me for the plugin…) Well, I do know this: Their music is awesome. Ever listen to a CD, then come to a song that makes you just stop the disc and put that song on repeat play for a couple of hours? “Open Skies” is one of those songs. I know I’m not the only one like that: when Beavis and Butthead saw a video they really liked, they said MTV should just play that video over and over. Beavis and Butthead wouldn’t like claas-p.jambor though. Too punky, and they’re Christian.

But three-chord Christian punk seems to be just what I’ve been looking for.

Blogging. Dan Bowman sent me a link to a site that looks promising. If you like it when I go off on my non-computer tangents, you’ll probably find him interesting. If you wonder what it’s like to be a Catholic priest, or a former Catholic priest, you’ll probably like it. He’s only been at it for a week or so. I like him. He shoots straight, makes me think, and holds just enough back to keep an aura about him. I think he’s more enigmatic than I am.

Effective e-mail communication. I guess I have to do a little computer stuff, huh? Here’s a snippet from a piece of e-mail I sent this morning, to someone who’s about to attend a seminar on effective communications:

“Dave’s rule #1: Make sure what you’re trying to communicate will actually be delivered. Therefore, you should avoid Outlook at all costs.”

To which he responded, Outlook is effective for sending mail bombs, viruses, Powerpoint presentations and Flash animations. I’m sure it transmits Anthrax just fine too. But I’ve had three, maybe even four people have Outlook just flat die in the past week. The answer is sometimes to run nfclean.exe and scanpst.exe. Sometimes I have to delete the user’s NT profile and import their PST. Sometimes I have to completely reinstall.

I hate Outlook. I hate Windows. And I can’t have another Amiga.

Give me Unix or give me death.

It’s October…

Dave Farquhar Hardware , ,

October…
When the trees are stripped bare
Of all they wear
Do I care?
October…
When kingdoms rise
And kingdoms fall
–U2
I didn’t do a whole lot this weekend. I laid around a lot, I did some dishes, and Saturday night I went out with some friends. More on that later. I can’t tell the story properly right now.

Linux as a diagnostic. I remain convinced that compiling Linux is the best system-wide diagnostic in existance. Case point: I lost a drive in a Windows 2000 box a while back. I gave up on trying to get the data back; all I cared about was my Baseball Mogul stats, but I started another game, built up another dynasty, so I don’t care about it anymore. I reformatted the drive and put Sorcerer Linux on it. First things first, an all-SCSI Linux box with a fast CPU really rocks. The most time-consuming part of the boot time is bringing up the SCSI interface. That takes about 15 seconds. The rest of the process is literally instantaneous.

Well, there’s no point in having a great system without recompiling everything specifically for it to take maximum advantage of it, right? So I started recompiling. The controversial 2.4.10 kernel came down and compiled without a hitch, and yes, the system does run very nicely with it. The simpler packages that provide most of the standard Unix utilities came down and compiled quickly and easily. Then when it came time to recompile the monstrosity that is glibc (the key library of any Unix system, and it’s a 16-meg bzipped tarball–this thing’s huge), the system’s weaknesses showed up. The drive failed again. I got sector errors and the system crashed hard. I reset and tried again. It came back up, Reiserfs quickly fixed everything, and it looked good, so I recompiled. This time, I reached the end of the compile process, but when it came time to copy the files into place, files that are there stopped being there. The drive failed again.

So, I’ve either got a heat problem or a power problem. The drive’s kinda crammed in a spot where it doesn’t get much airflow, and I’ve got a PCP&C power supply, so I suspect it’s a heat problem.

Nothing stress-tests PC components like compiling an entire operating system. Besides, even under regular use Linux tends to push hardware harder than Windows, even Windows 2000, but I see that as a good thing. I paid for the hardware, so I want my OS to squeeze it for every ounce it’s worth.

Anything for a distraction…

Dave Farquhar General ,

Politics. A local political activist sent me an editorial slamming the Sierra Club for backing down on its anti-Bush campaign during the war. The Sierra Club is arguing that being perceived as anti-patriotic/anti-American hurts its cause more in the long run than suspending for a while. The author takes them to task for not standing by their principles; I think it’s a wise move. They can sling all the mud they want after the fact without harming their reputation, and they’ll accomplish at least as much, if not more.
I often disagree with liberals, but I don’t think they’re idiots. On the other hand, I usually agree with conservative ideas, but I grow tired of seeing conservatives shoot themselves in the foot constantly.

Changes. My Linux box has been my main workstation for about three days now. Konqueror is a more than competent Web browser with some really nice features; KWord turns out to be an awfully nice word processor; it doesn’t do everything Word does but it stays out of my way, and it provides just about all of the functionality that Final Copy, my preferred Amiga word processor, gave me. And KWord’s desktop publishing capabilities put Word to shame. I suspect it’s close to being the equal of Publisher for light DTP work. I wish it had a word count feature and a means of handling footnotes and/or endnotes, but those aren’t features I use constantly. (I can always save the document as plain text and then run it through the standard Unix utility wc; which probably means word count would be frighteningly easy for someone who knew what he was doing to just flat-out implement–output the file in plain-text to a temporary file, pump it through wc, then pop up the output in a dialog box–but C++ scares me.

For mail, I’ve been using Sylpheed, a fast and lightweight client. It’s not feature filled, but it does what I need a mail client to do, and, again, it stays out of my way.

Overheard. “Women are always right, which makes for an interesting problem when two women disagree. So we each just walked away and didn’t say anything.”

I laughed.

“You do know the woman is always right, don’t you?”

“I learned that the hard way. Several years ago.”

(Later in the conversation. Much later.)

“Maybe I’m not quite as brilliant as I think I am.”

“That’s okay, you can keep on thinking you’re brilliant if you want.”

“I can? Cool! Can I have that in writing, so I can take it to work and frame it and hang it in my cubicle?”

“Only if you remember that the woman is always right.”

I expect her to have that sheet of paper written out the next time I see her. And you better believe I’ll be hanging that up if I get it.

Dave goes shopping.

Dave Farquhar General , ,

Who do I remind myself of? My aunt and my grandmother.
I’d better explain.

One of my buddies showed up for Bible study ranting and raving about a band called Third Day. “Where have these guys been all my life?” he kept asking. “They single-handedly got me interested in contemporary Christian music!”

This, coming from a guy who’s met Frank Black (back when he was Black Francis, frontman for the Pixies) and still gets excited when he tells the story. OK, if Jon likes these guys, I’d better check them out.

So I went out last night to get a Third Day record. OK, a CD. But “record” just sounds cooler.

Meanwhile, I remembered that the department stores were all advertising Labor Day sales. Makes sense; if consumer electronics stores do it, other places probably do too. I just never paid attention before. So I looked around. I was only mildly impressed with JC Penney. I found a couple of shirts I really liked, but not in my size. I found a short-sleeved plain white dress shirt in my size for $13 that I almost bought, but if I’m going to buy shirts, I’m not just going to buy one. It’s a minor miracle that I’ve gone shopping for clothes twice this year, so I’m not going to waste the effort.

Against my better judgment, I figured, I went into Famous-Barr. It’s a more expensive place; exclusively a midwest chain if I understand correctly. I hit paydirt. I found a rack full of short-sleeved shirts marked down to $9.99. I guess someone forgot that August just ended Friday, and we’ll be seeing the high 80s for at least another week here in St. Louis. Short-sleeved weather doesn’t really go away until mid-October. These shirts will see some good use. I grabbed a tan and a grey Geoffrey Beene, and a white shirt of some other brand. They’ll see some use this fall, and come spring, they’ll all still look good. The same shirts cost $30 in May, and that was a sale price. I know, because I bought a pair of Beenes back then and they’re my favorite shirts because they’re failry dressy, but they’re almost as comfortable as t-shirts.

I need another brown belt, too, and I looked. I found a belt I liked, made in the United States. I know I shouldn’t buy things made in totalitarian countries (the States aren’t totalitarian, you say? Two words, buddy: Dmitry Sklyarov.) but that didn’t matter. The belt was too small for me. I have to say that’s the first time I’ve ever seen a belt too small for me. I found some other belts I liked, and all of them fit, but they were all made in China. I’d sooner let my pants droop than buy something made in China, so I put them back. I guess I should have asked the clerk if they had any belts not made in China, but people who do that kind of thing bug me. The clerk has no control over where the belts come from, and his bosses don’t care. So I left the store with three nice shirts. Total cost: 34 bucks.

I didn’t used to care about how I dressed–I’d wear whatever I had that was clean, and if it was black, bonus. Then one day, not quite a year ago, I went to read my daily User Friendly, and it was the strip that introduced Sid Dabster, the old-school Unix sysadmin known for wearing a tie. “Hey! He can’t be a geek! He’s wearing a tie!”

And then I remembered a conversation I had just before the last wedding I was in. I came out of the dressing room in my tux, one of the other guys in the party whistled. “You say you don’t get any respect at work? Show up dressed like that!“

I’m 26, and I’ve spent my whole professional career in places where a 40-year-old is still considered a kid. You’re not an adult there until your kids are all married. So I figured, what the heck. I took off the polo shirt I’d put on that morning, grabbed my white long-sleeved dress shirt and a burgundy tie (rule #1: you can’t go wrong with black pants, a white shirt, and a tie that’s some shade of red–it’s completely unoriginal but it always looks good, unless you wad it up or sleep in it or something) and went off to work. People kept asking me where my job interview was that day. I just smiled mysteriously.

I went up to work on a pretty girl’s computer. “What are you all dressed up for?” she asked. Now, what I should have said was, “Because I figured I might see you,” but I’m not that smooth.

I continued the experiment for about a month. I noticed the things I said carried more weight. So, these days I wear a tie more often than my boss, more often than my boss’ boss, and even more often than the Director of IT. But that’s OK. They’re all older than me. In fact, since two of them have sons my age, they’re full-fledged adults.

After a month, the experiment stopped being an experiment and started being my daily routine. Good thing too. I ran into the prettiest girl from my high school class back in February or March. “You look nice,” she said, and then asked what I was doing these days.

I came back and told my cube neighbor I was glad I had the tie and trenchcoat that day, then told him all about it. He asked if I got a date. “No,” I said. ‘She’s married and has two kids.”

“Well then why are you worried about impressing her?” he asked, shooting me a really dirty look.

“You never know,” I said. “I doubt all of her friends are married.”

One of these days, I may figure out what colors look good together, but I pretty much cheat. If a set of colors is used on a tie, and the tie strikes me as looking good and not tacky, I’ll mimic that scheme with my choice of pants and shirt. Beyond that, I know navy blue and black don’t mix, and brown and black don’t mix either. But you’ll rarely, if ever, see those combinations on a tie.

Unfortunately, my pager is black. I’ll have to tell them to issue me a brown pager to wear some of the time so I can finally stop committing a major fashion faux pas several times a week.

Something tells me that request will get me a dirty look and nothing else.

Sorcerer, meet Squid. Squid, meet Sorcerer.

Dave Farquhar General , , ,

I didn’t feel all that well last night. Not sure if I’m coming down with something, or if it’s something else. I’ve actually felt a little weird for the last couple of days, so I’ve been sucking down zinc lozenges, and I remembered Steve DeLassus’ advice the last time I got sick: swallow a raw garlic clove. I felt fine the next day. So guess what I had for breakfast this morning? That’ll solve the problem of anyone wanting to come near me all day…
I napped a good part of the evening, but I got a little work done. I finally got the guts to raise my hand in the Sorcerer mailing list and ask if anyone else was having problems compiling XFree86. Turns out there was a bug. So now I don’t feel so stupid. It took a couple of hours to compile, and at first I configured it wrong, but now I’ve got a usable GUI.

I also installed Squid on the Sorcerer box. There isn’t a spell for Squid yet, and I’m not positive I can write it (it requires adding users and doinking with configuration files, and editing configuration files automatically goes a little beyond my Unix lack-of-expertise), but I may give it a try. One thing that annoys me about Squid: It uses really lame compiler options, and it ignores the system default options. I need to learn the syntax of make files so I can try to override that. The main reason to run Squid is for performance, so who wouldn’t want a Squid compiled to wring every ounce of performance it can out of the CPU?

But at any rate, I installed it, and did minimal–and I mean minimal–configuration: adding a user “squid” and setting it to run as that user, changing ownership of its directory hierarchy, opening it up to the world (I’m behind a firewall), running squid -NCd1, and putting a really lame script in /etc/rc3.d. Here’s the script:

#!/bin/sh
echo “Starting Squid…”
/usr/local/squid/bin/squid

See? Told you it was lame.

Performance? It smokes. There are a few sites that Squid seems to slow down no matter what, but www.kcstar.com absolutely rips now, so I can get my Royals updates faster.

It makes sense. My Squid boxes have previously been TurboLinux boxes, which are nice, minimalist systems, but they’re designed for portability. In other words, they’re still 386-optimized. Plus, they’re running the 2.2 kernel and ext2. This one’s running 2.4.9, disk formatted reiserfs, with everything optimized for i686.

Sorcerer: An easier way to get Linux your way

Dave Farquhar Linux , ,

I’ve talked about Linux From Scratch before, and I like how it gives you just what you want, compiled how you want, by your system, for your system, but it doesn’t actually give you a very useful system in the end.
Sure, you’ve got a text-based system with all the standard Unix utilities, and it boots like greased lightning, but there’s still a fair bit of configuration you have to do afterward. And the attitude of the committee that wrote it seems to be that if the documentation to do something exists elsewhere, it shouldn’t be repeated there. Speaking as a published author, I don’t agree with that absolute. Sure, a table listing DOS commands and their Unix equivalents is out of place in that kind of book, because that’s non-essential for getting a working system. But the two paragraphs required to tell you how to get your network card configured isn’t a big deal. Just do it!

I could spend way too much time ragging on the project, and it wouldn’t accomplish anything productive. Linux From Scratch is a fabulous way to learn a lot about the inner workings of a Linux system, and it’s an opportunity few, if any, other operating systems give you. And I guess since it makes you work so hard and look in other places for information, you learn more.

But if your main goal is a lean, mean system built the way you want it, rather than education, and you’re willing to give up a little control, there’s another way: Sorcerer Linux.

For Sorcerer, you download an ISO image that contains the essentials like a kernel, file utilities, a C compiler, and necessary libraries, all compiled for i586. This gives a good balance of compatibility and performance. When you install it, it compiles a kernel for your system, then it copies everything else to the drive.

The heart of Sorcerer is a set of shell scripts that automatically downloads current versions of software, checks dependencies, and compiles and installs them for you. It’s not as convenient or as polished as RPM, but it’s usable and the benefits, of course, are tremendous. You get the newest, most secure, most stable (and, usually, fastest) versions of the software you need, compiled for your particular architecture rather than the lowest common denominator.

I had some trouble installing Sorcerer at first. I found that after compiling the kernel, I had to answer Yes to the question, “Edit /etc/lilo.conf?” and make a change. The default /boot parameter didn’t work for my system. I had to change it from /devices/discs/disc0/part7 to /devices/discs/disc0/disc.

To avoid having to recompile the kernel over and over to get to that menu option that let me edit LILO’s parameters, here’s what I did:

chroot /mnt/root
mount -t devfs /devices /devices
nano /etc/lilo.conf
lilo -f
exit

Sorcerer doesn’t currently have spells (sorcerers cast spells, therefore, Sorcerer packages are called spells, get it?) for every package under the sun, but most of the essentials are covered. I’ll have to write spells for a few of my faves and contribute them.