04.15.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 4:56 by lnxwalt
It has been over a year since we first established this domain. In that time, I’ve been mostly working out of state or at least out of my home area, so I haven’t had any time to do anything about it. I may be going out again soon, but I’m trying to at least get things started beforehand.
Be patient and we’ll get there.
Our focus is not really on polishing our own site(s), but on making sure that the SLOBs/OMBs/FOBs that we ally ourselves with have the tools they need to better compete with the big corporations that rule our lives and our country. Only in this way will our towns and cities be rebuilt and our state and local governments begin to focus on the smaller businesses that provide the bulk of our employment.
Our toolset is firmly planted in the open camp. FLOSS uses copyrights and licenses to benefit the user, rather than to oppress the user (as EULAs do). Among the freedoms that are inherent in FLOSS is the freedom to use and distribute modifications to the original application. We look forward to using that freedom to make open source software an even better fit and an even better deal for smaller businesses.
Watch this space for news and updates.
Tags: Announcements, coming soon
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04.08.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 0:55 by lnxwalt
Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll be migrating our software to a different environment. If you find an outage, just wait a day and you should be once again able to get to us.
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03.21.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 9:12 by lnxwalt
A government leader in South Africa speaks of the threat to open standards and indigenous open source projects caused by patents and ersatz standards like Not-so-open XML. In the process, she really shows the extent to which big corporate software companies have blinded our state and federal governments to their procurement responsibilities.
Vulindlela - Open the Path - Idlelo - Opening Address
With regard to Open Standards …
The adoption of open standards by governments is a critical factor in building interoperable information systems which are open, accessible, fair and which reinforce democratic culture and good governance practices. In South Africa we have a guiding document produced by my department called the Minimum Interoperability Standards for Information Systems in Government (MIOS). The MIOS prescribes the use of open standards for all areas of information interoperability, including, notably, the use of the Open Document Format (ODF) for exchange of office documents. ODF is an open standard developed by a technical committee within the OASIS consortium. The committee represents multiple vendors and Free Software community groups. OASIS submitted the standard to the International Standards Organisation in 2005 and it was adopted as an ISO standard in 2006. South Africa is amongst a growing number of National Governments who have adopted ODF over the past year.
It is unfortunate that the leading vendor of office software, which enjoys considerable dominance in the market, chose not to participate and support ODF in its products, but rather to develop its own competing document standard which is now also awaiting judgement in the ISO process. If it is successful, it is difficult to see how consumers will benefit from these two overlapping ISO standards. I would like to appeal to vendors to listen to the demands of consumers as well as Free Software developers. Please work together to produce interoperable document standards. The proliferation of multiple standards in this space is confusing and costly.
Remember, this isn’t someone from a competing software company. This is a government minister, contending for the survival of an indigenous software industry, both free / open source and closed source.
It is worth reading the text or watching the video. Once again I urge that ISO national bodies send OOXML (DIS29500) back to Ecma for repair and processing under the normal standards submission process.
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03.17.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 6:46 by lnxwalt
I was talking with a friend about some of the problems in the local community. We talked about the job situation, about the transportation situation, and about the cost of living here, versus somewhere closer to Los Angeles.
Afterwards, I was thinking that one reason that communities like ours are in the condition they are is because we are not willing to get involved in doing things to make the place better. I want people who live here to be fully able to live and work in the same general area, without long commutes into Los Angeles and Orange counties. I want this area to have loads of affordable owner-occupied housing.
Even more, I want people who live here to feel that they count, that they are part of a community and commonality of purpose with others who live here. I want big retail companies from outside the area to see our residents continuing to support SLOBs, and big manufacturing companies to bring their plants back from overseas outsourcing centers for the quality workforce.
So how do I propose to make all that happen? I can’t make it happen, but I can help it happen by getting involved. Do you know that a few interested locals can cause the city council to do the right thing for their citizens? Did you know that a few local volunteers can help the city keep the streets free from trash, serve as extra eyes for the police department, or even help local non-profits keep youth out of trouble? Why wait for “meals on wheels” to bring food to your elderly neighbors? Make a practice of going by daily to check on them and to make sure they have what they need—perhaps even calling their children to come and check on any questionable financial deals they may get involved in.
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02.27.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 3:56 by lnxwalt
There is a long-held tradition in this country as well as Europe, that we should promote competitive markets and that we should oppose the abuse of monopolies.
Over the past several years, Microsoft has proven themselves adept at using their monopoly power to squeeze other companies out of their particular parts of the market. The resulting loss of choice caused consumers to pay higher prices and lose access to any improvements that would have been made available.
A few years ago, a number of companies in the industry started work on a vendor-neutral format. That format became OpenDocument Format (ODF), standardized by OASIS and by the ISO as an industry and international standard for office documents. Although Microsoft was a member of OASIS, where the format was defined, they chose not to participate–after all, they have a monopoly in office software which they would risk losing if anyone else could read and write the same file formats with full fidelity. Instead, Microsoft created something called Office Open XML (OOXML), or as I call it, Not-so-open XML.
OOXML was submitted to Ecma to standardize–with the requirement that whatever Ecma decide on had to be fully-compatible with their pre-defined format used in their Office 2007 product (which hadn’t been released when Ecma started their work). Ecma then submitted this second file format to ISO to be standardized as an international standard for office documents. OOXML, beside some ongoing questions about the legal ability for other software to use the standard, is also designed with all sorts of compatibility features, meant to carry the mistakes of prior generations of office software into the foreseeable future. OOXML has a number of unspecified secret areas which are mostly the same things about Microsoft’s file formats that were historically used to keep competing companies in the dark about how to properly read and write their formats.
This move to standardize OOXML was turned back in September of 2007, when the ISO fast-track ballot to approve it failed. Now, the ISO is giving Microsoft/Ecma a second chance to try to pass OOXML. Because Microsoft’s business strategy depends upon the income from its twin monopolies (Windows and Office), they are really running a full-court press to try to push this off on the world.
Standards attorney Andy Updegrove has a pretty expressive essay that describes some of the issues that are now apparent, in particular the need for standards that are industry-wide, vendor-neutral, and unrestricted (by “intellectual property”, licensing restrictions, or fees) for any use by governmental agencies of any kind.
Many of the most important groups promoting software freedom (not price freedom, as in “free beer”) have urged that OOXML not be standardized until it is altered to be the kind of standard that Andy is describing.
Now Google, the Web’s leading search engine and advertising platform, has joined in, urging that ISO not standardize OOXML in its present form.
Do you have files from several years ago that you are required to maintain? Is your present software able to properly read/interpret/process those files? If you lost access to the original application or version of the application, is the file format an open standard format which you could pay someone to write an import filter for your present software? If the answer to any of those questions is “no”, you are a hostage to closed and proprietary file formats.
While OOXML pretends to be open, it is really a proprietary format in drag. Join Mr. Updegrove, Groklaw, the Free Software Foundation, the FSF Europe, ByteFree, Google, and myself in urging ISO and your country’s “national body” ISO representative group to reject OOXML.
Microsoft can be a great company when it is pressed to compete. IE7 is miles ahead of IE6, thanks to competition from Firefox. If OOXML is rejected and governments begin to use ODF for all their editable documents, Microsoft will implement ODF and both we and they will be better off for it.
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02.22.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 6:51 by lnxwalt
Much of the tech world is entranced at the politicking going on as Microsoft seeks to persuade the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) to endorse Office Open XML (OOXML, a file format based upon the format used in Microsoft Office 2007) as an international standard. Bloggers ranging from Brian Jones and Doug Mahugh at Microsoft, to IBM’s Bob Sutor and Rob Weir, to renowned standards attorney Andy Updegrove, to independents such as Pamela Jones of Groklaw, myself (Walt Hucks of Opportunity Knocks), Shane Coyle & Roy Schestowitz of Boycott Novell, CyberTech Rambler of CyberTech Rambler, and Orcmid (Dennis E. Hamilton) or Orcmid’s Lair have weighed in with opinions of why the motion should or should not pass.
Regardless of which way the ISO final vote goes, here are some things you should expect to see:
- Microsoft is slowly losing share in the office suite space; losing to FLOSS such as OpenOffice, KOffice, and AbiWord; losing to online office products such as Google Docs, Zoho, ThinkFree, and Ajax13; losing to users of older versions of its software; and especially losing to the move to Web-based everything. If anything, this will only accelerate.
- There is already an international standard for office documents—OpenDocument Format—approved as ISO/IEC 26300:2006. ODF is vendor-neutral, being designed from the beginning to encompass the functionality of multiple vendors’ products. In Europe and other overseas countries, governments, non-profit groups, and educational groups are increasingly standardizing on ODF. Because of immense political pressure, governernmental adoption in the US has lagged, which will cost us in the future when we have to mount a sudden rapid-conversion program.
- Despite new announcements from Redmond about how they are going to make it easier for end-users to use whatever products from whatever vendors and still interchange data files, the simple truth is that their MS Office monopoly is one of only two really successful businesses propping up such flops as the Zune, Origami, and MSN. The American stock market rewards short-sighted and short-term actions, even as those actions combine to have sharply negative longer-term effects on companies. This would seem to indicate that Microsoft (MSFT) will simply try to create new monopolies through takeovers, while desperately fighting to preserve existing monopolies. In short, they cannot afford to make it easy or possible for a competitor to arise that would take away their control of the market.
- The quest for more openness will continue. Organizations such as BytesFree and EFF will continue to push for legal and social recognition of individual data rights. Certain government agencies, along with many large corporations that see dollar signs in data harvesting, will continue to oppose this quest. In other arenas, groups like Creative Commons, the WikiMedia Foundation, and the Free Software Foundation will continue pushing for freedom in software, the arts, and cultural items. In the end, openness is worth the costs, but we have to recognize that it does in fact cost us something and that it is worth that cost in order to have openness and its benefits.
- Users of Linux, FreeBSD, and other alternative operating systems will continue to grow in number. Few, if any, of these users will have access to any OOXML file, while most will continue to have access to ODF and usually the old MSFT binary formats. OOXML is locked into a constantly-shrinking box. A rather large box, to be sure, but still shrinking.
In your home and your business, you should prepare for the coming changes. If you are a Windows-only company, you need to deploy computers powered by Linux or Mac within your business. Chances are, you will find certain closed, proprietary formats and protocols that the newcomers will not translate as well. Those formats and protocols are the ones that give your software vendor an intravenous tap into your wallet. In each case, you should start planning for a move to open standard, vendor-neutral formats and protocols. If you use Microsoft Office, you can start by rolling out Sun’s ODF plugin to all employees and then starting to use OpenDocument Format files as your “official” documents (and the existing binary formats such as .doc and .xls as your “interchange formats” for exchanging documents with those outside your organization during a transition period). During this time, notify your regular clients and suppliers that you are transitioning to ODF formats (make CDs with the plugin and give them out so they too can install it). After a year or so, those clients and suppliers should be ready for your transition.
You should start trying out some of the web-based suites, especially those that support ODF as well as the old MSFT binary formats. I recommend both Google Docs and Zoho. What you do not want to do is let your business get trapped into a single-source solution when that source may be losing share in the market.
Blogged with Flock
Tags: ODF, OOXML
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01.17.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 7:02 by lnxwalt
A Yahoo article points out that even homeowners with high incomes and good credit are losing their homes.
(These articles are often available for a limited time period, so it may be gone if you are not reading this in early 2008.)
The news to date portrays the mortgage collapse as being a problem with weak "sub-prime" loans, which are high-rate loans made to buyers who would not otherwise qualify for loans. We are starting to see that it is not just people with lower incomes and marginal credit that are experiencing difficulty making their payments.
The article quotes a real estate salesperson as saying that many people in a certain wealthy neighborhood borrowed too much, trying to look successful. This article supports one of the conclusions of a study published in the Boston Review, namely that much of Americans’ debt load is due to higher housing costs.
Small businesses, of course, are in danger. Even though big financial companies caused the crisis by their actions, the government will intervene to protect them from the consequences under the guise of stabilizing the economy. We know that they won’t act to protect smaller businesses. If you are a business owner or manager, I would recommend that you start reeling in your receivables and slashing credit offered now. If all of your accounts are held in one bank, I would encourage you to split them between two or three banks, so that you are less likely to be closed by a bank failure.
You should also look into establishing relationships with locally-owned suppliers, particularly those who actually produce (make, mine, or grow) the products they supply. If the Chinese were to decide one day to stop financing our economy, imported products might become scarce or extremely expensive.
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11.22.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 3:54 by lnxwalt
I have been pretty silent lately. It has been a busy time at work, and there has been little or no time for anything outside of work. I have not, however, been completely unproductive. (As if being at work was not productive in the first place.)
As I have pondered the fact that my present employment is becoming repetitive—I never would have imagined ten years ago that working with computers could bore me—and this job is also acting as a brake on my skills development and career advancement.
I’m currently positioned at a place 48 miles from my present residence. It is not a bad commute most days. If there was a longer-term opening in that general vicinity, I would most certainly look at it. With the long hours and limited time off, it is becoming a problem—I am fighting sleep during my nearly three hours a day commuting time—and yet, I am glad that I am not at another one of the local sites. But I think the overall solution is one that is harder: I have to relocate away from the often-beautiful Victor Valley to be closer to a location where there is opportunity for me. It is always hard to force this kind of change upon unwilling family members, no matter how much it will benefit them as well as yourself.
I am anticipating responses along the lines of “Go if you want to, but I am staying right here.” If you are the person who would say this, you should know that you are making a serious mistake, with long-range consequences for your entire family. Instead of looking only at the ideal, look at the actual conditions around you and consider those conditions in the choices you make.
As we watch the financial industry implode (primarily because they were able to put buyers into “fool’s loans” for several years without any action by regulatory agencies and now a large number of buyers are being pummelled by the effects of these unsavory loans, which is pulling greedy lenders down with them), we realize that it portends an era of financial danger for individuals and families.
To any buyers in that situation, I want you to know that it can be a very liberating experience to get rid of that weight. If you can find a way to get out from under the loan without losing money, such as finding a quick buyer that will pay enough cash to satisfy your lender, you may want to take it. The alternative is to go through foreclosure, with all of the attendant damage to your credit (and possibly your income also).
Do not deceive yourself. If you have a fool’s loan, such as an adjustable-rate mortgage or an interest-only loan with a balloon payment at the end, there is a real chance that you will lose your home no matter what you do.
In the meantime, if you still have a home to live in, give thanks to God. Thousands of homes reportedly burned in Southern California last month and early this month. A typhoon (hurricane) recently struck Bangladesh, killing thousands and devastating many villages. While you have a place to sleep and food and clothing, be thankful.
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving Day in the United States.&160; Let it be more than just a time to overeat and listen to the same boring stories from your relatives. Return to our national roots—give thanks unto God for all the good things you have—remember that you very well could be one of the have-nots this time next year.
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11.16.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 8:34 by lnxwalt
Fire is destructive, at least it can become destructive when it gets out of control. Yet, it is a necessary part of the cycle of existence here on the earth.
When the fires erupted in Southern California, it wasn’t unexpected. We who live in the drier parts of SoCal are well aware of the potential for wildfires. You can see me in the Spring when I’m home, out with a hoe, chopping up vegetation growing near the house and fence.
I rarely even try to watch television, so I had no concept of just how large an area burned, or how many homes were affected by this event.
I’m starting to see some of the photos of the flames towering in the sky.
It brings to mind some of the lessons people learned in earlier natural and man-made disasters:
* Once an event reaches a certain scale, no amount of planning and pre-allocated resources will be enough to deal with the loss. In your network infrastructure, as in the rest of your life and business, you need to go for resiliency. When something happens, you may be able to mitigate the effects, but you may not. Resiliency is the ability to bounce back after the event and regain your balance, so you can begin the journey back to where you were.
* If you are safe, but your neighbors are not, you are not safe after all. Whatever the event: fire, flood, earthquake, or UFO invasion, your response must also help your neighbor. Likewise, your network infrastructure’s ability to render assistance to nearby families and businesses whose connectivity is lost may be key to your family’s and your business’s recovery later on.
* If your network is based upon one vendor’s proprietary products and protocols, and not amenable to carrying traffic or attaching devices and software that is not made by that same vendor, your network is insanely vulnerable. That’s why every network needs to be based around open standard file formats and protocols (and arguably, libre / open source implementations of those standard file formats and protocols). If you cannot drop in another vendor’s product and be almost fully functional within 24 to 72 hours, you are sunk.
* A disastrous event such as the fires affects a wide variety of people, communities, and businesses. After the event, recovery depends upon these same people, communities, and businesses pulling together to help one another recover and rebuild. Outside help can only get you so far. Likewise, local families’ and businesses’ networks may need to start out with piggy-backing applications (software) on one business’s machines, and / or moving their network traffic across one business’s network.
* The fires were devastating in patches across Southern California, much of which covered areas that were not inhabited. The after-effects, including flooding and mudslides, will likely affect more of the inhabited areas. Still, this is quite a bit different from having most of a major city buried under thirty feet of water. It won’t be long until the fires (and the following flooding and mud / land slides) here are forgotten. The storm that flooded New Orleans and much of the Gulf Coast, Katrina, will be remembered far longer. California’s recovery will be long over before Louisiana’s effort winds down.
* Insurance companies, upstanding citizens that they are, will deny or limit payouts for legitimate claims on policies upon which they were happy to collect premiums for so many years. A number of other policy-holders will find their policies canceled as the companies realize that continuing to collect premiums could put them on the hook in the next big disastrous event.
* At some point, the “no strings attached” aid from outside will go away, and whatever recovery efforts continue must be self-generated and self-funded.
As always, this is solely the opinion of the author, and in no way represents the ideas of any employer, company, or government agency.
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11.02.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 6:19 by lnxwalt
Here in Southern California, where we are starting to get a handle on the fires that forced up to half a million people to flee their homes, it is curious to see how the decisions that our politicians make (and the developers that pay for their campaigns carry out) affect our lives.
Many of these fires are believed to have been caused by downed power lines in areas that are prone to regular doses of fast-moving winds. You have to wonder why these wires are suspended in the air in such areas. Surely it is less than the cost of the 2003 and 2007 fires to bury the wires in the most dangerous areas, perhaps running them through non-conductive, moisture-resistant piping in order to minimize power losses due to contact with the ground. Likewise, it is foolhardy to ignore the need to put solar and wind generation capability right there in those areas, near the housing that necessitates their existence. (In fact, I’d say that each home should have the ability to generate at least half of its annual consumption from non-polluting sources.)
Just as surely, turning down some requests to build in "edge" areas most prone to fire and to unwanted wildlife interactions and requiring non-flamable building materialswhen permits are granted is just common sense.
California is reaping the consequences of the land-use choices of its local communities. Rather than deciding to integrate multiple types of housing and multiple employers and industries into common neighborhoods where there is less need to spend hours on the freeway each day, there are sometimes completely separate municipalities for industrial, commercial, and residential uses. For the residential cities, known as "bedroom communities", the way to increase the tax base is to build more housing, as newer and more expensive homes generate more taxes than older homes built when prices were lower.
I am currently about seventy miles from home, near the coordination center for the disaster-relief efforts. It took meover an hour to drive the twenty miles to work today. Over an hour! That is difficult to imagine, so let me put it into perspective. Most of us can ride a bicycle twenty miles per hour. Why does it take so long to travel such a short distance? Because local governmental leaders throughout Southern California are not willing to be honest with their constituents and tell us that we will have to sacrifice for a while in order to avoid a soon-coming hardship that could end our way of life.
I guess we get the leadership we deserve. If we required honest, forward-looking leadership, we would not be in this situation. Since we do not require it, we do not and will not get it.
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