Older blog entries for Burgundavia (starting at number 86)

Seems some people in the GNOME camp are getting to enjoy the "service" from Continental. While my trip with them to New Orleans was fairly uneventful, I have noted that their flight attendants are rude, their 1-800 people are rude and unhelpful, and they seem to be allergic to the idea that people might need to change times and names on flights. Now contrast that with excellent and friendly service from Westjet, both with ticket changes and their flight attendants. Maybe these old airlines really just die...

New Orleans

I have arrived in the lovely city of New Orleans. The weather here is stinking hot and the city is mess. You can walk five blocks and see everything from abandoned buildings with the Katrina searchers tags on them to glitzy brand new Holiday Inns. Plus everybody here seems to have a new car. I guess all that FEMA money came in handy. More later...

As some of you may already know, I have been away for work at the Canadian Library Association's annual conference in Ottawa for the past 5 days. If you have emailed or otherwise tried to contact me and have not been able to reach me, I apologize. I am currently sorting through my email now.

Given there is no rest for the wicked, I am off to the American Library Association's annual conference in New Orleans this Wednesday and I will be away until the 2nd of July.

All this travel means I haven't done much on the Ubuntu front nor can I say that I will be able to respond any message is any sort of timely fashion. On the flip side, the number of libraries DiscoverStation (and thus Linux) is growing! Now I just need to convince my company to base off of Ubuntu. Oh, and stay tuned for something interesting from my company and Ubuntu. (or just read dapper-changes )

It seems a some people are confused about my previous blog post. I just wanted to clarify a few things:

1. This is mostly a social issue, not a technical one
2. As such, even if an existing tool is not perfect, if you can get the people that make it onboard to help write an NG version, you have won. Hence the reference to system-config and Fedora.
3. I don't want the world to be written in Python. I mentioned Python because Ubuntu has a love affair with it, which naturally attracts more Python people and thus we can more easily maintain such code.
4. Each distro having its own configuration tools is complete madness. Note that our friends in the KDE world are just as stuck. (although Guidance might go a long way to solving this)

I didn't want to offend anybody and I am sorry if I did. It is just frustrating to see all this duplication when there are so many other cool things to be working on.

Cheers :)

The world needs yet another set of system configuration tools. Yes, it really does. To prove it to you, I give you: Umbrella!. I can hear Baby Jesus crying already.

Sarcasm aside, this is a serious. Yes gnome-system-tools suck, but lets come at this a different way then every other distro on the planet. Rather than write our own, why don't we sit down with the Fedora people and Carlos (who maintains g-s-t) and merge our various efforts into one. Fedora have already produced their system-config stuff, written in the lovely Python. Lets get those into GNOME and start working on this in a collaborative space, not our own little silos. Please?

Due to some inspired work by Brian Burger (Madpilot), Ubuntu Canada now has a logo:

It appears that the Globe and Mail (one of two of Canada's national newpapers), has an article on Ubuntu 6.06.

This is exactly the kind of article the Marketing Team needs to help produce more of. Ubuntu already has great traction in the national and international tech press, now we need to get the non-tech press and local tech press.

And as a final note, thanks to everybody for a great release. It has been a real pleasure working alongside everybody. Special kudos to Matthew East for piloting the ubuntu-doc ship through these last few months. It has and will be a great ride. If you live in Victoria, BC, Canada and want to come hang out with us, we are having a party. Details for all the Dapper parties on the Dapper Release Parties wiki page.

Ubuntu Canada

After much downtime, we now have web presence again! And a new logo! Check us out at ubuntu-ca.org. The DNS for ubuntu.ca should also happen sometime soon.

After reading Paul Graham's excellent essay on How to start a Silicon Valley and the website of the Project for Public Spaces, I have realized that the Free Software and Open Source communities can do more to bridge the divide between us and those who advocate a more human world such as librarians, teachers, philosphers, scientists, environmentalists, and social activists. They help the poor, the weak, the ignorant and the forgotten. To them computers are ivory towers with flashing lights. To be feared and respected. And they cost a bundle, money and time sorely needed elsewhere.

So how do we engage our allies? Talk to them about copyleft, Creative Commons and freedom of information. Tell them about them about the wonders of Free and Open Source software. So what if business people think Linux is not ready for the desktop? These are not business people! We can give them high quality software at a price they cannot beat, backed with a philosophy they can agree with.

Where do you start? Go volunteer at a local NGO. Better yet, organize a technology night for a bunch of them. Get your local LUG involved. There are a million myriad ways, limited merely by your imagination.

According this ZDNet article, the European Commission has decided that "computer programs will be excluded from patentability in the upcoming Community Patent legislation, and that the European Patent Office (EPO) will be bound by this law." Here is the original question, by a Polish MEP. Once again, the Poles have a deciding role in this. Assuming this is true, it is stunning news.

Without much sadness I have bid Firefox goodbye on the last place I was using it, my desktop machine. Memory and CPU usage simply became too much to handle. I truly love the Mozilla people for producing such an awesome browser for Windows, but those of us who use different platforms, Firefox is not the way to go. Go Epiphany!

Dear Application Developers,

I have noticed a worrying trend recently. Too many application developers and packagers seem to think that putting core functionality into a plugin or extension is a good idea. It is not. The next time some user asks me how to open ODT in Abiword (you need the abiword-plugins package, which is NOT installed by default when you install Abiword) or how to do session saving in Firefox (you need an extension), I think I am going to scream.

So if you develop an application, please remember that plugins and extensions are for whizbang features not many use, not for core pieces, like opening a file format or recovering from a crash.

Yours,
Corey Burger
Department of Good Defaults