He posits that Microsoft is facing serious competition from Linux on netbooks and other low-end computers, such that if it wishes to protect its application market (mostly Office), it had better give away the OS. Unfortunately, it’s not clear that he really understands what “open source” means, instead using it as a synonym for “free of charge.” You can download most open source software free of charge, but as the name implies, it’s about more than price. In fact, it’s really about availability of source code. It just happens that if the source code is freely available, it’s really hard to charge much for a compiled binary; as a secondary effect, the application is usually free.

Nevertheless, let’s restate the first sentence of this post as “Will Microsoft be compelled to give away Windows for free?” And the answer is that it already does. Or close to free: Large computer retailers like Dell certainly aren’t paying what you would pay for Windows when buying it in a store. In fact, according to Babcock’s article, they’re paying $34.00 a copy. And here’s a tip if you work for a large company — when the Microsoft rep comes around trying to get you to upgrade to Vista, or Windows 7 when that time comes, tell him that you’re conducting an internal study examining the feasibility of switching to Linux. Your price will come down dramatically too! Linux has mostly damaged Microsoft by serving as a handy negotiating hammer for organizations whom one suspects weren’t even seriously considering switching in the first place. People don’t have to actually adopt Linux for it to eat into Microsoft’s profits.

That it has become such a credible threat is a benchmark of how far it has evolved over the past few years. However, that may not amount to much in the marketplace as long as Microsoft is prepared to cut any deal to keep organizations from switching teams.

And speaking of those potentially Microsoft-threatening netbooks, how is the father of all netbooks, the OLPC XO, faring? I suppose the answer is in how you look at it.

From a hardware perspective, there are problems, especially if one examines the response to OLPC’s two G1G1 (give one, get one) campaigns. G1G1 was a program where if you paid for two XOs, one would be sent to you, and one to a needy child somewhere in the developing world.

In 2007, G1G1 netted $37 million. In 2008, it netted $2.5 million, necessitating the firing of 50% of the OLPC staff. What happened? OLPC founder Nicholas Negroponte blames it on the economy, but I don’t think the economy alone is sufficient cause for such a dramatic difference. Another approach to the question might be: Why was 2007 so successful? In part it may have been the birth of the netbook, the idea of a wee, inexpensive laptop which would be everything you needed for simple tasks like web surfing and email, coupled with the marketing of the XO as if it were a wee, general purpose laptop. But its success quickly turned on OLPC, as many people, upon receiving their XOs, were dismayed to discover that the devices sported a radically new operating environment, a graphical one designed from the ground up exclusively for use in the classroom, and following the pedagogical philosophy of constructionism. It was called Sugar. By the time of the 2008 G1G1 the cat was out of the bag regarding the XO.

And the final reason the 2008 G1G1 may have been such a dismal failure was the simple fact that Nicholas Negroponte is a colossal buzzkill who, by getting into bed with Microsoft, pissed off hoards of open source fans who were cheering for the project, as well as working for it. The chief software architect, Walter Bender, resigned over the matter. Personally, when the 2008 G1G1 was on I considered hyping it a bit, here and there and to friends or wherever, but it just didn’t feel worth the effort. There was a little voice in the back of my mind saying “Just die already.” It’s hard to see how the OLPC can continue with such a profound deficit of vision at the top, now that many like Bender have left.

If you were to ask how the software is doing, however, the answer would be somewhat different. When Bender left OLPC, he set up Sugar Labs to continue the OS’s development. Sugar is released under an open source license, the GPL, so there’s absolutely nothing stopping him from continuing on his own. Indeed, he has something of an advantage over OLPC in that, while no one is going to give you hardware for free, people will give of their time and talents for something they are passionate about. Sugar is alive and well and carrying on, with plans for the future. These include Sugar on a Stick, basically a bootable USB stick you can use to boot into the Sugar environment on most any old computer. Sweet.

Negroponte isn’t abandoning his commitment to OLPC’s software platform, Sugar. As he wrote on the OLPC Community News listserv:

Sugar needs a wider basis, to run on more Linux platforms and to run under Windows. We have been engaged in discussions with Microsoft for several months, to explore a dual boot version of the XO. Some of you have seen what Microsoft developed on their own for the XO. It works well and now needs Sugar on top of it (so to speak).

Meanwhile, Walter Bender may have resigned from OLPC, but Sugar is released under the GNU General Public License (GPL), which allows anyone to do whatever they like with it, provided credit is given where due. That’s exactly what he intends to do, and not even necessarily on the XO:

Over time there are lots of things that will happen with Sugar in terms of efficiency and platform independence. Already, the community has by and large ported Sugar to Ubuntu [a form of Linux]. You can do an “apt-get Sugar” and if you’ve put the right repositories in place, you can install Sugar on Ubuntu. There is also a live CD that some folks in Austria put together, so you can run Sugar from your CD drive. There’s a lot of discussion on the developer forums about how to make all of that happen more efficiently.

The flip side — it’s been attributed to Steve Jobs, though I never heard him say it — is that if you really care about software you have to work on hardware. Certainly there are a lot of hooks from Sugar into the OLPC hardware, because the hardware itself is pretty special. But while I think that the things that OLPC has done with the hardware are necessary for successful deployment, I think that there are compromises that can be made with other hardware in the short term. So [you could get Sugar running on] other laptops and even other computers.

Walter Bender in Xconomy

So, to summarize, one side holds the position that Sugar should be able to run on other platforms, whereas the other side asserts that Sugar should be able to run on other platforms. Not much of a split, it would seem, except that you can google your way through everything said and written by Bender and I doubt you’ll ever find him advocating Windows as one of the platforms on which Sugar should run. In fact, as he also wrote in Xconomy:

I think the culture around free software is actually a powerful culture for learning, and one of my goals from the very beginning of the project was to try to instill in the education industry some of the culture and technology and morals of the open source movement. I think it would greatly enhance the learning and education industry and their ability to engage teachers and students. So many different things are tied up in this concept. It’s both about freedom, and the freedom to be critical. Criticism of ideas is a powerful force in learning, and unleashing that is, I think, an important part of the OLPC mission.

So there you have it. It’s not about the XO, and it’s not about Sugar — both sides are committed to both those manifestations of the OLPC project. But even if you could get Sugar to run as an application suite on Windows, with its own program manager and activities journal, there are those in the OLPC project, and others who felt so strongly about these matters that they had to leave, who would still be opposed. These are the ones who believe that open source software in general is critical to the mission of education, and that closed source software, especially that of a convicted monopolist corporation like Microsoft, is not only undesirable, but detrimental to that mission.

So when Negroponte characterizes his opponents as “open-source fundamentalists,” he’s not entirely wrong. A less inflammatory term would be preferable, though — say, “people uncompromisingly committed to the empowerment of educators and students through the freedom which open-source software provides.” That’s a bit more of a mouthful, but it does sound much nicer, doesn’t it?

Even her brother, my octogenarian uncle, has finally retired his opinion that the internet is no more than a passing fad, and has gotten wired. It’s just not optional anymore. Imagine how frustrating it must be for the last holdouts being told to “google it,” or “visit our website for more information,” or to hear of the great deals to be had online now that the Canadian dollar is worth more than its American counterpart (though you wouldn’t know it to look at prices in Canada’s brick and mortar stores).

And yet, in spite of how wired as a population we have become, the hospital had only two computers for patient use, and Mom couldn’t figure out how to use them to send email. I’m not sure what the problem was, since she’s comfortable using her ISP’s webmail, but apparently these two machines were hopeless. Her one connection to the outside world was her mobile phone, and she learned the very valuable lesson to never travel without the adapter to recharge it.

Shortly after her release and return home, I visited and brought a MacBook for her, since it seemed to be something she should have if she’s going to be getting herself trapped in hospitals for weeks at a time. Being in hospital is about the closest most of us will come to being in prison, and expecting them to adequately accommodate our networking needs may be unwise.

I was also thinking that it was about time to upgrade her old machine, and that the MacBook could serve as a replacement. Prior to leaving, I set up things I knew she would want, such as Firefox and NeoOffice (an OS X fork of OpenOffice.org), then, while there, got a wireless router set up so she could use the MacBook anywhere in the house, and made sure it would be easy for her to connect peripherals. The trackpad that comes with the MacBook is not a joy to learn. I know people who, after weeks of practice, have come to manage well enough, but I can’t see ever preferring it or the MacBook keyboard to a real mouse and real keyboard, especially if working for more than 20 minutes.

While she thought the MacBook was very cool, she made clear that she had absolutely no intention of switching from Linux (Fedora 7). After messing with OS X myself, experimenting with it, and setting up the thing, I could sympathize with that position. About the only things the MacBook has over Fedora for the “average user” are portability, and, in Mom’s case, better printer support. Every now and then Fedora doesn’t seem to recognize her USB laser printer and requires a reboot, whereas the printer and the MacBook were fast friends the moment I plugged in the printer’s USB cable.

In anticipation of the switch, however, I installed VMWare‘s Fusion, their virtual machine application for OS X. Some time ago I posted about running multiple operating systems in virtual machines, and at that time suspected that a company called Parallels might be more on the ball than VMWare with regard to the home market. My encounter with Fusion has changed my mind about that. I had tried Parallels, but the virtual machine I created couldn’t boot the Fedora 7 install DVD. Fusion, on the other hand, didn’t even require physical media; its virtual machine was perfectly happy to boot from the disk image I had created the boot dvd from. I have never seen a faster Linux install, and VMWare is even matching the $79.99 price for Parallel’s similar offering.

My idea had been that if Mom wanted to switch, she could still use Linux in a virtual machine for anything there wasn’t a suitable Mac equivalent for, as well as import her old email in the event that the Mac email application couldn’t. That turned out not to be an issue, however, since she wasn’t going to switch. I offered to at least install Windows XP into a virtual machine for her, but she asked, “What would I need that for?” Indeed.

So the lesson I learned is that if you switch the average computer user (someone who doesn’t need AutoCad, multimedia authoring, or commercial computer games) to Linux, then come back a few years later offering to switch them to OS X, it’s probably not going to happen. Even an offer to augment them with Windows as an add-on in a virtual machine may be declined. Linux, it turns out, is all they need.

Which is a revelation. I had wondered for awhile there if OS X might not be a threat to Linux, but now I’m not so sure. If it is a threat, it’s not because of the operating system itself, but rather the very neat packaging that Apple does. The MacBook really is a sweet little package and could be regarded as all the computer you really need. Just go into an Apple store with a wheelbarrow full of cash and you can leave with a lighter wheelbarrow and a sweet machine with an excellent OS pre-installed. Or you can download an excellent OS (Kubuntu, superior even to Fedora, IMO) for free, for which there exists loads of excellent free software, but you have to install it yourself (not really that difficult if you don’t want to dual boot — just download an image, burn it, boot it on the machine you want to install it on, and follow the prompts).

If it was a choice between Windows or OS X, that would be a real no brainer, but Linux vs. OS X is a much tougher call. Obviously we tend to be biased towards the devil we know than the devils we know not of, but in getting to know the OS X devil I found it to be a bit of a dumb blond compared to Kubuntu, especially with regard to two things in particular: codecs and mandated dvd impairments.

When OS X runs across a multimedia file that it doesn’t have the codec to play, it doesn’t know what to do, so it asks you what program you want to use to open it. Kubuntu, on the other hand, may recognize the problem for what it is, say it doesn’t have a codec to play Windows Media files, then offer to install the relevant codec from the internet for you. Very smart.

What I’m calling mandated dvd impairments are rules with regard to dvd which have no technological reason to be, sometimes also referred to as faulty by design. This includes enforcement of region codes and inability to skip things like FBI warnings. Linux dvd players tend to be somewhat contemptuous of mandated dvd impairments, whereas Apple, being itself a corporation, plays by the corporations’ rules. Consequently, leaving Windows for OS X would be a little like jumping out of the frying pan into a much nicer sauce pan on low heat. Clearly an improvement, but if you want to escape the whole corporate control thing, Linux would be without doubt the superior choice. This isn’t simply a matter of philosophy, it directly impacts how the dvd application works and who knows what else. If you believe that “informati
on wants to be free,” you may prefer to go with the OS least likely to attempt to constrain it.

Yes, next trip out I’ll upgrade Mom to Kubuntu on better commodity PC hardware. The desktop will look pretty much the same so it will appear to be the devil she knows, but smarter, stronger, and hopefully it will get along with the printer just as well as OS X. As for the MacBook, she’s looking forward to traveling with it, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she winds up using it with iPhoto which is a very friendly digital photo manager/enhancer, a nice complement to a digital camera when traveling.

Perhaps that’s how it should be. Leave to the desktop the serious work, and let the laptop be the auxiliary for traveling. Instead of being tempted by the power of the little things to replace the desktop, just be thankful for that power on the road. Or in a hospital bed.

I’m not talking dual boot here, where you choose which operating system (OS) you want to run when the computer starts. I’m talking about working happily away in Linux, feeling a need to run a Windows application, then firing up XP in a window as though it were an application itself, and then running the Windows application there. When done, one can then shut down Windows or effectively alt+tab back to Linux.

How is this magic performed? Through the emergence of virtual machines. A virtual machine is a computer created entirely in software. Once you’ve created one on your desktop or notebook, you can then install any supported operating system on it, and run applications within it.

Here is a screen shot of Windows running in a virtual machine under Linux. The window manager being used here, WindowMaker, isn’t from by one of the standard, windowsy software developers like KDE or Gnome, but I like it.

The reverse is also an option — running XP and firing up Linux. While this seems a somewhat odd choice, eschewing the stability and security of Linux as the host OS in favour of an OS not noted for these qualities, it would be an interesting option for the Windows user wanting to try Linux without messing at all with their hardware. (If you’re interested in giving Linux a shot, there are a lot of distributions out there, but the most popular at the moment are Fedora and Ubuntu. I recommend the Kubuntu flavour of Ubuntu for Windows users, as it’s the most Windows-like.)

But first you have to create that virtual machine. For PCers, the software to use is VMware Workstation. It’s a bit pricey at $189.00, but the 30 day free trial is completely functional, and once it expires you can use the free VMplayer to continue to run any virtual machines you’ve created. At the moment, VMware does not support OS/X, so PC users can’t use it to create a virtual Mac (or are on their own if they try). VMware also has a free product, VMware Converter, which offers to “virtualize” an existing Windows install, but I haven’t tried it so won’t comment, other than to say it looks interesting.

Mac users are especially blessed in that they can use all operating system families that run on Intel/AMD processors, with OS/X as the host and virtual machines for the others. The software that performs the magic is called Parallels Desktop (cost, $79.99). It looks as though Parallels has released a product for the PC as well for $49.99, Parallels Workstation. I may give that a try. If the Parallels offering is as good as VMware Workstation, that could be bad news for the latter, though VMware still seems to regard developers, not home users, as its primary market. I get the impression that Parallels has a better appreciation of where this market is going.

Virtual machines are limited only by the hardware resources at hand. Each virtual machine eats a chunk of RAM and consumes CPU cycles. Until recently, that meant they were mostly used by software developers with enterprise level hardware to play with. But thanks to the ever increasing power of run-of-the-mill PCs, and, in the case of the Mac, Apple’s brilliant decision to go with multicore Intel processors, they’ve now become an option for ordinary mortals.

Microsoft, ever wary of potential threats to their monopoly, will not allow regular versions of Vista to be run on a virtual machine. Instead they require those wishing to do so to buy a special, more expensive version called Vista Uber Alles. (Okay, the real name is “Ultimate”.) Vista Business and Enterprise are allowed as well, though Enterprise is the really good one mere human beings can’t buy, and shouldn’t look for through, say, unlicensed channels like thepiratebay.org. It probably hasn’t been cracked yet, anyway.

My solution? Forget about Vista and run Windows 98SE, or 2000, or XP, ideally in the corporate version that doesn’t require activation. Again, don’t go looking for the corporate XP at a site like thepiratebay.org; if you do, the BSA will get you.

Friendly BSA Representative

While I am a die hard Linux user, I do acknowledge there are some things for which Windows is better — backing up DVDs, for example. Of course, the best Windows software for this can’t be downloaded from the developer’s sites since they’re afraid of corporate lawyer assassins, so you have to know how to look for it and not get infected with a lot of spyware/adware/trojans along the way. Which just reinforces my love of Linux, especially the culture. And now, not being able to run Windows software isn’t a problem. Because I can.

But it might not be long before I switch platform to Mac. OS/X, Linux, and Windows, all running on a single machine? Sweet.

- o -

I wrote in an earlier entry about Bill Gates actually becoming critical of some Digital Rights Management (more accurately known as Digital Restriction Management). Now Steve Jobs has joined in the criticism. Apparently iTunes has to have DRM because the record labels insist. It’s not Apple’s fault.

Too late? You already have data? Ok, then follow these 4 steps.

1. Never share or lose control of your data.
2. Become a multibillionaire.
3. Create a facility for launching things into the sun.
4. Launch your data into the sun.

Note that the above assumes no one develops a means of temporal snooping whereby they can look at your data in a time before you launched it.

Sadly, it is too late for many of us, as we’ve shared data and in some cases let it slip completely out of our control. And becoming a billionaire can be such a lot of work, especially if your parents weren’t billionaires.

Never regard data on the internet as ephemeral. Anything you cast out there may wash up in nooks and crannies where they will remain lodged until entropy is allowed to take its course. Google has copies of messages I posted to news groups in 1996. Their demise could be hastened by the obliteration of Google from the face of the earth, via direct hits with nuclear weapons on all its facilities. But somehow that doesn’t seem likely, so we shouldn’t count on it.

The Wayback Machine has copies of my web site from 1997. And do you know what is going on with your ISP’s hard drives? What do they back up, how many back ups do they keep, and for how long?

For that matter, what about your own hard drive? I hope that by now most people know that simply deleting a file from your hard drive doesn’t mean the data is gone. Most file systems simply delete your filename from the hard drive partition’s table of contents, effectively rendering the space the data occupies unprotected and therefore available to be overwritten. “Shredder” applications can be used to really delete the data, typically by overwriting it and thus making it harder, though still not impossible, to recover. However, the more difficult it becomes to recover data, the less likely anyone is going to want to expend the resources necessary to recover it. (Here’s an interesting video about recovering the data of the long dead.)

If you want to be really certain, and cannot afford the launch-into-the-sun strategy, do this: “shred,” then open up the drive, take out the pretty silver disks, and melt them. Or at the very least run a strong magnet over them, and then take a sledge hammer to them. Or if you aren’t that concerned and want to create a quantitative love letter, overwrite the entire content of the drive with the simple text “I love you” over and over again until there’s no space left, then remove the drive, remove the pretty silver disks, and present them to your beloved (you may need to boot a live linux cd if the operating system you usually use is on the drive being overwritten. I like Knoppix). For a bit of quality rather than mere quantity, fill the drive 14 times, each time with a different line from Shakespeare’s sonnet #18, or #29, or one of the other romantic ones (not the “give it up, babe, you’re not getting any younger” ones).

As for any stuff that’s already loose on the internet, there’s not a lot you can do. For future reference: when participating in anything that might hurt job, marriage, political, or other prospects, seriously consider using a false name or nickname.

It is possible to put a positive spin on all this. In the far future, maybe analysis of that post I made to a forum criticizing someone’s spelling of “lose” will help historians of language identify the transitional period during which “lose” acquired another o. There’s no longer any need to write a great novel; the immortality of each of us is assured by all the data that escapes our computers.

Once upon a time, not so long ago, computers were big things owned by businesses, governments, and universities. That changed in the 1970s, largely due to economics. The bits and pieces that go into a computer came down in price to the point where enthusiasts could afford to buy those bits and pieces. Perhaps the origin of the personal computer as we know it today was the Altair computer kit which provided a bunch of the bits and pieces in one package you could put together yourself. But even the kit approach required that one have a willingness to learn. There were few gurus who had all the answers, so enthusiasts communicated with one another, sharing code and ideas, and progressing this new phenomenon at a hobbyist level.

The idea of paying for code would have seemed very strange, unless you were a young man by the name of William Henry Gates III. The letter that marks the beginning of the split in personal computer culture, between those valuing free exchange of information and code and those promoting the commercialization of such, was written by Bill Gates and dated February 3rd, 1976 (copy here). In it he argues that the hobby would suffer unless people were paid to write code for it, and that taking that code without paying for it was hurting the hobby.

Perhaps the primary beneficiaries of Gates’ aggressive stance were himself and the other billionaires Microsoft produced. In fairness, on the UNIX side of the equation there was a lot of greed as well. Not until 1991 would there be a complete, free *NIX operating system. (Fudging the name is necessary because UNIX is still a trademark that can be used only by those who buy a license.) That’s when Linus Torvalds created a kernel (the heart of any operating system) which worked well in conjunction with the already existing GNU utilities. There was a *NIX for the PC, 386BSD, but it was not made available to the public until 1992.

Torvalds has said that Linux wouldn’t have happened had 386BSD been available earlier, since it would have fulfilled his desire for a *NIX on the PC. By the time Torvalds released the first version of his fledgling kernel, Microsoft’s DOS had been around for a decade, Windows 3.0 existed, and 3.1 was just around the corner. It was Bill Gates’ vision of a commercialized personal computer that had triumphed, almost by default.

Apple existed as well, of course, but it was almost worse on the “freedom” front than Microsoft. While IBM surrendered control of both microprocessor and operating system , thus facilitating the emergence of much more affordable “clones,” Apple controlled everything, hardware and software. Apple could be considered “alternative” in a positive way primarily because they were, and remain, a sideshow relative to the booming PC market that came to be, in large part due to the “missteps” of IBM. In 1984, Steve Wozniak wrote an early history of Apple titled Homebrew and How the Apple Came to Be which is interesting not only for the hi,story of Apple, but also for capturing something of the sense of those early days of the hobbyist enthusiasts. Wozniak would leave Apple in 1985. An inveterate hacker at heart, I don’t think he was ever completely comfortable with the corporate side of things which was more the forte of his partner, Steve Jobs.

So how is this “ancient” history relevant? If you’re a Windows user, does it seem “normal” to you to pay for software, perhaps even purchasing it untried in a shrink-wrapped cardboard box? I can tell you that a Linux user would find that strange. Thanks largely to Linux and the free software (or open source, FOSS, FLOSS, whatever term you prefer) movement, the ethic of the old enthusiasts is alive and well and thriving as never before.

This is good, because media interests are trying to “pull a Gates” and tell us that “Digital Rights Management” (DRM) is a good thing which will protect their profitability and thus ensure their ability to continue to provide us with whatever shit it is that they provide. The Free Software Foundation‘s Richard Stallman comes much closer to the truth when he refers to DRM as “Digital Restriction Management,” since that’s exactly what it is. (Stallman has been concerned about this sort of thing since before the term was coined — see his The Right to Read.) It can be used to restrict content to running only on a particular machine, to allow only a limited number of views before expiring, to allow only a certain number of backup copies if any, to restrict playback to a particular geographical location, and so on. It is all about restriction. Will it come to be regarded as “normal” in the same way that Windows users see nothing strange in paying through the nose for all the code running on their computer?

The free software community is opposed in the extreme to DRM, since it runs directly contrary to their core ideals. On the other hand, Microsoft’s latest incarnation of Windows, Microsoft Vista, embraces DRM, which is cause for concern. Polishlinux.org has published a comprehensive summary of these concerns, with many links to more information for those who want to dig further.

I have a science-fiction vision of the IT underground, where the only hardware not tainted with DRM is made in China and using it is illegal in most of the “civilized” countries. And the only software that allows users to do anything they want with it is (also illegal) the GNU software, developed in basements by so-called “IT terrorists” — Linux kernel hackers, former Novell and Red Hat employees and sponsored by the Bin Laden of the IT — Mark Shuttleworth. Sounds ridiculous? Well, hopefully so. But I don’t think Microsoft and Apple would be protesting when this ridiculous and insane vision comes true . . .

The article isn’t all doom and gloom, and includes tips on how to protect yourself from DRM. The primary, simplest course of action, of course, is not to purchase anything which promotes it. The entities behind it are commercial, and if their support of DRM hurts them financially they will eventually back off. Even Bill Gates is beginning to get it, if only on the technical front, though any insights he may be gaining will have no influence on Vista.

Will DRM come to be regarded as normal? That may depend on what you regard as normal now. And what you think should be normal in the future.

Sing, ye gods, the anger of us all, for countless spams that fill our in-boxes. Many a brave soul has attempted to filter them to a junk folder, only to have filters fail in the face of bogus text. And who is it who must bear the blame? It is the nephews, the brothers-in-law, the co-workers, the ones known as “good with Windows” who support clueless Windows users, for in so doing they also support the pestilence that plagues the people, because Windows was not born to be a networked operating system.

Or so Homer would have written had spam existed in his day. The Trojan War is nothing compared to the War on Spam, with its perpetual escalation of measure and countermeasure. When users attempted to use spam filters that worked by analyzing content, spammers added content to messages to make them appear more like non-spam to the filters. When blacklists threatened to block spam from spam sites, the spammers joined in league with the virus and trojan writers to subvert that most easily subvertible of operating systems, Windows, and turn compromised machines into spam servers.

There is plenty of blame to go around. We could go back to the early days of the design of the email protocols and blame their designers for not having enough foresight to build in spam resistance to the protocols themselves.

We could blame Microsoft for creating crappy operating systems, but if people wanted to pay us billions for our shit, which of us would not rejoice in every bowel movement?

We could blame the clueless users who buy and use the shit. But they are, by definition, clueless. Seeking to eradicate cluelessness could prove to be a thankless task.

No, the blame for the current situation must surely rest with those bright individuals who should know better, those nephews and brothers-in-law who aid and abet the clueless. Windows is not the only easy to use operating system anymore. Apple’s OS/X and Linux are both easy to use. Indeed, for some things, they are easier than Windows.

But no operating system is perfect. There will always be the occasional snag which will cause the clueless user to reach for the phone. Which operating system, then, from the clueless user’s perspective, is the best to use, given that they have absolutely no interest in learning for themselves how things work and how to fix them when they don’t work as they should? It is the operating system of the person they can call on the phone (or email — if the problem hasn’t precluded that option).

So it is you, you nephews and brothers-in-law and husbands of co-workers, who are facilitating the creation of massive bot-nets of compromised Windows machines, you who are not clueless yet commit the sin of settling for shit. Do everyone a favour and switch to a superior operating system, OS/X or Linux, it doesn’t matter, and then, when a clueless Windows user calls for help, be firm and say, “Wouldn’t know anything about that, I use Linux [or OS/X]. If you want to switch, I’d be happy to help you out.”

But if everyone stopped using Windows, wouldn’t the bad guys just focus more attention on Linux and OS/X thus continuing the problem? They could try, but there are technical reasons why Linux and OS/X are harder to subvert. Witness the popularity of the Apache web server which runs on many Linux machines — it outnumbers Microsoft’s web server, because it is much more secure by design.

Nine days long did they bring in great heaps wood, and on the morning of the tenth day with great rejoicing they laid their Windows CDs on the pile, and set the fire thereto. Then when the child of morning rosy-fingered dawn appeared on the eleventh day, the people again assembled, round the pyre of Windows. When they were got together, they first quenched the fire with wine wherever it was burning, and then gathered the ashes, loaded them in dump trucks, dumped them in a vast hole, which they covered over with large stones set close together. When they had heaped up a barrow they went back again into the city, and being well assembled they held high feast celebrating UNIX-like operating systems of all kinds from Apple, the BSDs, and the many blessed Linux distributions.

Thus, then, did they celebrate the funeral of Windows and all the evils it had spawned.

Sigh. One can dream.

I suppose the latter point could be considered something new. Until recently the push in microprocessors has been more speed. Why, I remember when the one gigahertz barrier was broken, way back about the time Mackenzie King made one of his lady friends a Senator. Then the two gigahertz barrier was broken shortly after the Stonewall Riots. Finally the three gigahertz barrier was broken about the time Geddy Lee was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. Since then increases in speed have been in small increments.

But speed isn’t everything. When Jean Pierre Lefebvre was working on the special effects for his film Les Fleurs Sauvages, he found uniprocessor computers much too slow rendering the frames he needed for the sequence where the flowers attack and destroy the town of La Tuque, Quebec. His solution was to use several computers, each with several processors, to do the rendering. This did nothing to increase the speed of the processor, of course, but he could have many processes going on at the same time which kept this special effects gem of Quebec cinema on schedule. Norman Jewison would later borrow these ideas and use them in his homage to Lefebvre, The Tulips that Ate Timmins.

Processor manufacturer Intel has taken it the next step and effectively put four processors onto a single chip; these are known as quad-core processors. It appears this is now the new area of competition. I predict that by the end of 2007 we will see octo-core processors. Will you need them if you don’t make movies featuring lots of special effects and animation? Probably not, though an old-school dual core processor is handy if you’re running a process which is particularly demanding of processor time — say, ripping a CD — as it leaves you a whole core to do other stuff with. With dual core you may not notice any slowdown in your computer’s performance, even when running a demanding process, As things progress you won’t have any choice anyway. Every computer for sale will have a multicore processor.

On the operating system front, I predict that 2007 will be the year of the Linux desktop. Ah ha ha ha ha ha! We Linux zealots say that every year! But seriously . . .

I predict that by the end of 2007, Windows XP installs will still outnumber Windows Vista installs, but not by much. Vista will overtake in 2008. There won’t be lineups for Vista the way there were during the Great Depression for Windows 95. Sure, it sounds funny now, lining up for Windows 95, but you have to remember that it was day traders using the even more unstable Windows 3.1 who caused the crash in ’29. Windows 95 was needed. Vista isn’t. All Vista really adds is more Digital Restriction Management (DRM) and some eye candy — if your computer is up to it. If you don’t have a fast processor and skookum graphics card you don’t even get the eye candy. Vista is apparently so evil that the Free Software Foundation has targeted it directly (indirectly they’ve always hated everything Microsoft) with their web site badvista.org.

So if it’s so bad, why do I predict its eventual takeover? Because it will be sold on new computers. Simple as that. As people retire their old machines, they’ll get Vista on the new ones and slowly Vista will take over by default. Mooooooooo. In time all Windows cattle get what they deserve.

But you’re not just one of the herd, right? For you there is good news. Apple OS/X on Intel. Under the hood, this OS is unixy enough to satisfy most hard core geeks, while on the surface Apple’s core competency at designing user interfaces shines. This is not the old Apple on which Allan Ginsberg repeatedly beat William S. Burroughs playing Missile Command. This is not the computer for that most oxy of morons, the “wealthy artist,” or for the kids on the short bus who would be confused by a mouse with more than one button. OS/X on Intel (yes, dual core Intel) is arguably the best desktop operating system in existence, and I predict that it will increase its share of the desktop market over 2007 to . . . oh, lets say 17.5%.

Okay, now back to the drinking. Here’s wishing you a very Happy New Year 2007. Cheers.