So, let me get this straight. There's this system admin who allegedly "hijacked" San Francisco's city-wide computer network. To the point where he got fired, arrested, and is now on trial. Half the stories out there have this guy tried and convicted. Because, you know, people who work in computers are so freaking scary.

Every charge against him that I've heard so far is "maybe" this and "we suspect" that. So far, the only hard evidence that he did anything is: he changed passwords on routers. No kidding? If I'm responsible for a whole major city's computer security, I'm going to change passwords, too! Maybe he should give his boss the new passwords, and maybe he shouldn't. Remember, we're always hearing about how stolen laptops compromise whose IT infrastructures - the government is no exception.

All I'd like to see is a chance for Terry Childs to speak for himself, to see if we have an explanation for this. Until I do, I'm inclined to think they arrested the wrong party. Especially after I have read this behind-the-scenes view of the whole story, so rarely afforded us in high-profile cases these days.

One huddle of Slashdot commenters finally sniffed out the root of the matter. When somebody expressed disbelief that a lone admin could be shouldered with the entire network for five years, with nobody knowing or caring how or what happened under their nose, another asked "You've never worked for the government, have you?"

Well, I have. For the state of California, in fact. In that and, even more so, other technical jobs for large corporations, I can relate and identify. Let me explain to you folks who have never had to suffer through the experience of working an IT career just what is going on between management and engineering.

If you work in computers, and you have a manager who doesn't, then to that manager you are dirt. You get paid on the same scale as the maintenance staff. You get the bare minimum of company perks they can get away with giving you. Basically, you are a plumber. You keep the data moving through the pipes - that's all they want to see. You literally never see anyone but your immediate supervisor for years unless something like a blackout happens, and then they just show up to chew you out for whatever wasn't your fault. The way management treats you, you're so much like a plumber that they avoid you like you just got through unclogging a sewer line.

The arrogance is 100% on the part of management. Everything from them to you is "Just shut up and do it!" Ask for more staff? Upgrade your equipment? Need more time to finish this repair? Allocate more resources for your project? You'll be blown off. Don't bother that expensive suit on its way out the door with a bag of golf clubs on a Wednesday morning - you can be replaced by some outsourced foreign temps, you know! After all, you're just a data plumber!

So, it's very easy to believe that for five years, one guy proved himself competent enough that he was able to keep the entire information infrastructure for a city going, and the city exploited him. I'll bet it wasn't like that at first. I'll bet there were layoffs. California is famous for budget crises, after all. I'll bet over time, one Big Honcho after another said, "Well, we don't need to keep these other people on - we've got Terry!" And they grin and slash the budget. Perhaps management dropped by the server room once a year - where they stick their head in the door, go "How's it goin', Terry?" with a big golf-tanned grin and then dust off before he has a chance to ask where that new monitor is which he requisitioned eight months ago.

Come on, I know I'm not the only one who's experienced this environment! Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, has all of those readers who can top his most satirical cartoons with real life examples. I know they don't just come out of thin air.

And the stories says the "rogue sysadmin" had to deal with a lot of office politics, and this reflects poorly on his attitude - where isn't there office politics? Anybody? Because though I've worked for companies with as little as ten people, there were always office politics. If I hadn't watched my tail and known what to kiss and when when I worked in cubicle-land, this could have been my story as easily as it could Mr. Child's.

And finally, he got kicked out over a tussle with newly hired security personnel. That just goes to show, if you work in IT, everybody but the wino behind the dumpster out back gets to bully you around. So far, this is all we have. For all we know, he was picked off in an office spat, then the brass hurried to cover their butts by claiming that he did all these alleged crimes. I've seen it before, and I'll see it again.

Because, you know, people who work in computers are so freaking scary.

Dear LazyWeb (as Jamie Zawinski would say),

Every now and then, I get one-word search hits from MS's Live.com. Example:

It's always like this. Like some bot was going through a dictionary file and visiting every hit returned from each word. It's almost never in groups like this, usually only one or two at a time. I'm not even on the first page for these words. These are the only kinds of hits I get from search.live.com, and every other search engine comes in with normal searches, never with a single word (unless it's a very uncommon word).

Just out of curiosity, I was wondering if anybody else has noticed this and what does it mean. Is this an SEO study, or is it really how MSN indexes the web?

Slashdot has a very good story up on The Web Development Skills Crisis. The discussion in the comments is very educational for new tech workers entering the market. Yes, kids, it really is that stupid. The HR who wants one year experience in a platform that just broke beta yesterday, the manager who insists you know some buzzword that's entirely unrelated to the task, the insane expectations of mastery in exchange for the depressing low wage: they're all true. They aren't even the most extreme cases.

And freelance tech workers will recognize the trend trickling down into one-shot contract jobs as well. You can tell when you're dealing with a company posting through HR as opposed to a lone webmaster: The home or independent business webmaster tells you what they want done, and leaves it to you to decide what tools to use. The company churns out a page of acronyms and leaves you with no clue what it is they want done. It sounds Web-two-point-ohey and synergistic and will be kind of a media-immersive experience or something, but really, stop laughing. What do you want me to do?

"I need you to integrate a viral marketing set-piece design with interactive content."

No, try again. What do you want me to do?

"You must have 18 years experience in J2EE with ASP certification on a LAMP server using REST and RAID and UUCP and PCI and knowledge of ICANN."

No, listen. Try answering with two words. One of them is to be a verb. The other one is a noun which will be the object of the verb. Now, one last time. What do you want me to do?

"Show..."

Shoooooow, very good, stay with me. Don't blank out now. Fly towards the light.

"...mooooovies."

Oh! You want to have video clips on your website like YouTube!

"Hey, yeah! YouTube? You have knowledge of the YouTube?"

Yeah, I'm at one with the YouTube. Couple of object tags, maybe some Javascript if you want to search the catalog, we're there.

Cynically, I've formed some self-defensive laws: One is, any new tech that comes out, I don't even waste my time on it for two years. If it's still going around after the two-year hype wears off, then it's worth learning. It's the "shelf life" test. The other one is, there's no connection between the number of acronyms in the job ad and the actual work you'll be doing. With some exceptions, applied with common sense. After a while, you get to spot the ringers.

What's worse is when people insist on brand names, when any generic application in that family will do. Illustrator= any vector editor, 3DMax= any ray-tracer or mesh-modeler, and the dreaded P***oS**p= any raster editor. Yeah, if you insist, I'll do the work in Inkscape, then sneaker-net it over to the Windows XP box to open it in Illustrator, check it, and re-save it. There, it's an Illustrator file.

Brand-tunnel-vision even works that way on Open Source software. "I need a Bash script that will run on Ubuntu." Sure, I've done many Bash scripts for Linux distros. "Yeah, but for Ubuntu???"

Magic words. That's all they're really asking. "Do you know magic words?" These computer things are scary and intimidating. You have to control computers with magic words. Can you do that?

Yes, I know all of the magic words! Why, I could babble them at you all day. Come to that, I could make up some new ones. I could say that I have 1000 years experience in Visual Perl, Objective SQL, Lisp-Flat, Emerald (the successor to Ruby), Capsula-3, Cisco++, and Googlese. God knows, there's people out there that claim that. But really, I'd rather just talk in terms that everybody knows. It sometimes takes a neurological hack straight out of a William Gibson novel to do it, but I always eventually find the connection in the brain between English and what they want the magic box to do.

Which usually ends up being something like converting their .GIF logo to vector, combing the brain-dead Frontpage Express code out of their HTML so it will work, and straightening out the server-side code so it only accesses the database when it needs to.

And it isn't anybody's fault, and it isn't going to get better. Technology is just... like that sometimes.

Hey, just because I'm a hardcore geek, doesn't mean I'm
one-dimensional! When I'm not doing anything involving a brain, here's
some little ways I like to keep myself - and others - busy. Think of
them as psychological happy-slapping, or little ways to add to the
world's surrealism.

* Provoking people to ask me what my sign is, so I can say it's 'no
  parking'. In my astrology chart (which is just as valid as any other),
  the signs are:

"lane ends merge left", 
"yield", 
"signal ahead", 
"school crossing", 
"four-way stop", 
"no stopping any time", 
"one-way", 
"speed limit 60",
"no parking",
"do not enter",
"road closed ahead",
and "road work ahead".

You want to see my chart?

* Whenever I see a commercial on TV with a phone number saying
  "operators are standing by", I like to call the number and ask, "Why
  won't your boss give you a chair so you can sit down?"

* I like to sing the words to 'Amazing Grace' to the tune of
  'Gilligan's Island'. See, it works because they're both in common
  meter.

* I enjoy writing down random series of lottery numbers on slips of paper,
  signing them "God", and dropping them on the ground for people to
  find.

* I sign up for Internet dating sites with bogus personas, and fill in
  my turn-ons as "beachside dinners and long walks on a candle". In the
  part where I say who I'm looking for, I put down "Seeking long-term
  relationship with a spambot who will steal my identity and link me to
  lots of camgirl sites."

* I used to torture my Sims, but I had to stop. They were starting to
  like it.

* The first time somebody sneezes, I get to say "Bless you". But
  sneezes rarely happen one at a time. If they sneeze a second time, I
  get to exercise one of the few chances I get as an American to utter a
  non-English word and not be executed for unpatriotism, and I say,
  "gesundheit". But after that, if they sneeze yet a third time, I'm
  stumped. I have to say, "I'm sorry, but I don't know any more magic
  spells." That's a shame, because there they are with their soul
  hanging halfway out their nose and I can't do a damn thing about it.

* Whenever I get a telemarketer call, I always save the number. Then
  if anybody asks me for my FAX number, I give them that.

Follow on from The Six Kinds of Anti-FOSS Trolls, where I dropped a little bomb about interfaces, and followed up with Interface Obsession Syndrome.

Thank all of you who've been responding, and have kept your rebuttals in the 'discussion and debate' range, rather than getting hot about it. I of course don't expect everybody to see it my way. I've seen this before; I get ahead of my time and what I say today, others end up saying five years later. So, I'll just gently nudge us towards a few points I'd like to point out, helped along by your well-thought-out comments, and probably leave it at that for now.

"The king is wearing no cloths Troll" posted...

"Some FOSS projects are half-done and really need to be fixed (a geek might like em, but real users need it finished, so not to have to dig in and do command line this and that)."

I will never understand the stigma against command lines. Are there people out there who were beaten with keyboards when they were children? Even Don Norman, who started this whole screaming match about usable interfaces (cursed be his name), has nice things to say about command lines sometimes. If a program appeals only to geeks, it's probably because it was only meant for geeks, and there are usually other programs that do the same thing available for non-geeks.

"Wolf" posted...

"The katana's interface is *not* simply the hilt. It's the balance of the blade in regards to the hilt, it's the very slight curve in the blade, it's the blade length and the hilt length, the material used to cover the hilt, the material in the sheath, the precise placement of the guard, and on, and on.

These are not niggling details, they are literally matters of life and death.

This is contrary to your assertion that everyone's ideas are equally valid."

Deep breaths, Wolf, deep breaths. Seriously, life and death? We're not talking swords, we're talking software. But, like the panic over terrorism in the USA, I would ask you, "How many katanas have you seen with the hilt coming out the side of the blade? Actual katanas?" Right, none, because nobody who is a katana-maker is that stupid. Once again, to Don Norman. Take a good look at the cover of "The Design of Everyday Things".

Oh, how cute, a teapot with the spout and the handle on the same side. Now, how many actual, physical teapots have you seen in real life that are built this way? No, don't tell me about allegory or you think there's parallel examples in software or you knew somebody... If you think that there are real-life designers who are this bad, then you are projecting your hatred of (pick one) engineers, developers, software, computers, technology, and maybe even science, onto the people who work in these fields. So again, it's a people issue, not a computer issue.

Don Norman did for software what the movie "Reefer Madness" did for medical marijuana, and a parade of "usability experts" have followed suit.. I'm afraid you've all been lied to, you've carried your lies around for decades, some of you have built a career on the false beliefs that others have in those lies, and now some upstart blogger comes along and tells you the news twenty years too late. Of course, you're shocked and angry. Trust me, I have a sense of humor about it. Maybe I'll try again in a few years.

"Ed The Sane" posted...

"Every software interface I've ever encountered has usability problems. Every UI could use improvement."

And "Marvin" posted...

"The sad truth is that a lot of these issues also apply to interface design on consumer electronics. Dunno why those engineers have to mess up best practice though."

You are indeed sane, Ed, and there's no bugs on you, Marvin, but the idea that I'm putting forth is perfectly mirrored with these statements. Apply Occam's razor. Does it seem more likely that:

(a) Every engineer since the dawn of history doesn't deserve his or her degree, has made tragic mistakes in everything he or she has designed, and there is still some perfect model of the ultimate interface that exists somewhere in the universe, undiscovered by all of our experts despite years of study?

...or...

(b) Computers (and many other digital devices) have only been with most of us for about 20 years, and we humans haven't fully adapted to them yet?

Well, color me jumping to conclusions, but I'm inclined to think it's (b).

We are standing on our heads and complaining that the world is upside-down.

When some people come to a computer, they bring this baggage with them of preconceived notions about how it is supposed to work, and when those notions aren't met, they blame the computer. When what we call "computer geeks" come to a computer and find it different from how we expected it, we blame ourselves, and then change our ideas based upon our discovery so we can get some work done.

All computers do is use electric currents to simulate logic. Even though we built these things ourselves, they are bound by actual laws of physics, hence limited in what they can do. Nature did not 'look ahead' and set up some convenient laws of logic to allow us to do whatever we want. Instead, logic, like mathematics, is absolute. We just have to work with what we've got and adapt things to our purpose. There is no perfect way to get the computer to do the exact right thing for all cases of "do what I mean".

Oh, but look at me nattering on. Thank all of you for the great discussion, and I'm still reading your comments even if you don't see me respond. Just thought I'd throw this idea out there every now and then, just to see if the masses are ready for it yet.

Update: For an example of the same idea expressed differently, turn to "Learning from 'bad' UI" at 37signals. A nice little parable is told about a user interface that is easy to criticize - until you think it over and then it makes sense. A quote:

"When we talk about 'usable' or 'intuitive' interfaces, Apple devotees and the web app crowd (myself included) tend to bias toward the first-time user."

...and in fact, the author is very gracious and filled with humility about admitting that the interface is worth a second thought. And look at the comments which flame him for it!

Update 7/17/08 For a scary example of the hellfire and damnation that awaits us all as we slide back from the Industrial Age to Cargo-Cult monkeys, see These things I believe at the blog which, apparently, is actually named "Not The User’s Fault".

Fine then, abandon society everyone! Quick, back to the caves! Last one to keep their opposable thumbs is a rotten egg! Just leave the lights on when you go - the rats or cockroaches might want to pick up where we left off.

Mind you, this retch-inducing screed is by somebody who just started working at Mozilla Labs three months ago. Mind you, what could be more under-designed than Mozilla Firefox? It has been the epitome of perfect user interface for three years now, and it has been so because they IGNORE the UI-Nazis. I give it three more months before he leaves Mozilla in a huff, flaming and fuming all the way out the door because they didn't bow down and worship his superior highness.

Who has Interface Obsession Syndrome? The computing world, that's who. All of it: designers, users, open source software, proprietary software, web designers, web surfers. Everybody. It's a disease.

Last post, I boldly proclaimed (using my proclaiming voice, which makes the font bold and a size larger), "There is not a single thing wrong with a single FOSS program's user interface, anywhere, period." And I expected to get some reactions, and I did, and I'm ready to explain that line.

I'll tell you right now: you're going to disagree with me. This will be one more of those times when you all wonder if I've gone off my rocker, and I will have to explain it again and again, and then a few more readers each time will gradually pick up the idea, until I've reached all that I can reach. But what the hey, you probably needed the intellectual exercise anyway. Here goes nothing:

(1) Before there were computers, before there was technology, there was just humans and nature.

(2) Nature does not listen to humans complain about lousy interface design. It just says "here you go" and we have to put up with it. Imagine all the departments we humans have had to adapt to, without control over the interface: eating, elimination, sex, communication, and dealing with other animals. Sex alone has such a contrived interface, that half of us have to fumble around and even after years of practice we wonder if we have it right. Eating, unless we're talking about raw fruits and vegetables, requires cooking, something none of us are born knowing how to do. Our first acquaintance with a non-intuitive interface as children is being toilet-trained.

A quote:

"The only 'intuitive' interface is the nipple. After that it's all learned." - variously attributed

(3) Then we started making tools and advancing our technology. Making fire is another thing that is non-intuitive. Nature does not install "turn on fire" buttons in the world. We had to figure it out. Stone clubs and knives are limited by their nature - we cannot tweak the interface too much; it needs a handle. The interface to hand tools do not come with instructions and a drop-down 'help' menu. And so on and so forth up through the industrial age.

A quote:

"Those early carmakers were simply lucky, in that they could dream up whatever interface was best suited to the task of driving an automobile, and people would learn it." - Neal Stephenson

(4) Even after computers were invented, for a while yet we did not concern ourselves with the concept of an 'interface'. We used what we could get to work. Those of you who are older will remember those acoustic phone modems, with the two foam cups to set the receiver in, as pictured here from this source:

...and people learned it, too! People learned all kinds of things about computers before. It is quite a shock to see them learning less and less about these devices which are more and more important to them with each passing year.

(5) So, in our modern age we now have evolved computers just about as far any of us can see possible without artificial intelligence, and subsequently we have a new power: for the first time in history, we have nearly unlimited freedom in how to design the interface.

Also for the first time in history (the last ten years, in fact), we have a raging flame war over what's a good interface and what isn't. Don't think for a minute that this is just a FOSS problem. We FOSS users only see the trolls flinging mud at us, because we don't venture outside of our territory very often. Drop by a Microsoft, Adobe, and yes, even an Apple forum - and you will see just as much mud being flung at those companies for their interfaces as well.

(6) Here's the difficult part: what if our whole concept of ease-of-interface was an illusion? What if the interface was just a tree, but it was the one tree blocking our view of the forest? We fasten our noses to the interface, we rage on and on and on about what's intuitive - but there is no universal definition of an intuitive interface! What makes sense to you confuses the bejabbers out of me, and vice versa.

A quote:

"Not only do many babies need to learn to breast feed, but the human nipple is terribly unpredictable. If a baby suckles on a male nipple, nothing happens! Suck on a female nipple, and only then do you get results. A baby could become totally discouraged from the first attempt and stop suckling on nipples. It would arguably be insane to do anything else." - terryblog (emphasis and grammar correction mine).

(7) Let's sit back and take a look at how humans behave. Imagine that you're going to build a program, and you're brainstorming on a notepad. Are you going to write down "TODO: Make the interface as hard to use as possible."? No, of course not. You're going to honestly try to get it as practical as you can. Had you been around in the cave man days, you wouldn't have designed a stone club with a steering wheel and gear shift on it.

(8) In (6), we put forth the idea that everybody has a different opinion of what a good user interface is. In (7) we see that anybody would logically try to design the best possible interface - as they see it. Now, we have a logical conclusion: Anybody's guess as to how the interface is designed is just as good as anybody else's guess! Even the stone club with a steering wheel and gear shift would find a few users - hey, it gives you a secure, two-handed grip!

(9) Now, one more thing - maybe it's also an illusion that we are free to do anything with an interface design on a piece of software. I don't care how many IDEs you build, programming will always require typing text in a programming language. No matter how fantastic Image Magick gets, we'll still want to use a mouse and image screen to draw graphics. And I still haven't seen an operating system interface without the almighty menu. All of these different tasks require giving them orders in different ways.

So we see, after all, that just like the toilet and fire and the stone club and the car and the stove, we actually design the interface to match the task. All that's left are these trivial quibbles over petty details. A waste of time. If we, as a species, never had another meeting or debate about interface design again, we'd be better off. When we perfect artificial intelligence so we can talk to the computer like it was the HAL 9000, we'll all adapt to that interface. Just like we did with the telephone - the button pad was an improvement over the rotary dial - but we had to wait until button-pad technology was perfected! After we did that, everybody went to buttons. No more rotary plastic dial. You see? Every one of us picks the right interface decision to the best of both common knowledge and present available technology at the time of design.

[A] Here is a B-2 Stealth Bomber, as seen from the cockpit:

and here is a tricycle:

The interface on the Stealth Bomber appears to be many times less intuitive than the interface on the tricycle. Why do you think that is?

[B] Imagine that the keyboard hasn't been invented yet, and you have been tasked with its design on paper. Where will you put the keys? What purpose will all of the keys have? Now consider that our modern QWERTY keyboard layout is the most widespread around the world, and yet is based on considerations for the outdated manual typewriter. Given how important many people consider interface design to be, why hasn't the standard desktop computer keyboard layout ever changed? Why haven't new designs, such as DVORAK, seen wide adoption? Which is more intuitive, QUERTY or DVORAK?

[C] Consider all of the spoken human languages there are in the world. Which language is the most intuitive? Which one is the most intuitive one to read and write in?

[D] How many programming languages are there in the world? Can you think of any new ones coming up? Why do we need so many of them? Shouldn't we just pick the most intuitive one and use it for everything?

[E] With cosmetic surgery being all the rage, why don't men have their nipples removed?

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Since I wrote about the seven kinds of anti-Linux FUD pundits, it occurred to me that plain old forum and blog-comment trolls could be classified, too.

Why does Free and Open Source Software get trolled so much? You'd think we were doing something awful by just writing programs and giving them away. While it is true that a lot of it could be mere paid asstroturfers courtesy of large commercial software companies, that doesn't explain them all. Over the years, I've seen so much online flamage - and even some in person! - that I couldn't miss spotting some patterns. You'll recognize these common trolls in this list. Most of them could almost be cut-and-pasted. Direct one here the next time you see them, if for nothing else than to urge them to get a new trick!

The Stockholder - This is very sad, because we have Joe Sixpack and Susie Soccermom out there with their 401-K being 50% tech stocks in proprietary software companies. And they then assume that all competing software companies are their mortal enemy. Look for lots of bad-mouthing the "competition" and boosting a well-known publicly-traded company, without much evidence of any technical knowledge.

Addendum: For another example of how investors let their wallet do the talking, look at the huge flame war going on right now over the fate of Yahoo. Microsoft is in a full-out war to crush it any way they can, and so hundreds of investors in one company or the other go online to spread the lies that Yahoo is a sinking ship who should submit to Microsoft.

It's all lies folks, every line by every troll, with Carl Icahn being in the lead. Yahoo is a Fortune 500 company (ranked #412), they take in $7 billion per year, and the domain attracts 1.5 billion visitors annually. If MSN.com were separated from the rest of Microsoft, Yahoo could buy them out of petty cash.

The Ugh-meri-kin - This neanderthal attacks GNU/Linux (it's always GNU/Linux) based on the nasty allegation that FOSS is communist, anti-capitalist, or anti-American. That goes 100% anti-logic. If anything, GNU/Linux is software as the signers of the Constitution would have had it. Democratic computing for Democratic people. It belongs to everyone, and is designed with the individual's maximum freedom always as its number-one cause. But then, not too much logic ever went into neanderthal philosophy.

The Vandal - The most dangerous troll of all. Capable of literally destroying FOSS projects just by flaming them online. The vandal always takes the tactic of attacking the interface. It's almost always a graphics program, too. And regardless of whether it's POVRay for 3D modeling or Inkscape for vector graphics, the comparison is always to Photoshop. The vandal works on insecure programmers. It works like this: "Your interface sucks!" So they change it. Then it's "Ha ha! I made you break a perfectly good program! Now you've rearranged your interface, confused yourself, alienated your old users, and not gotten any new users! You sucker, you fell for it!" So far, they've gotten Gimp and Blender this way. Don't fall for it, people! There is not a single thing wrong with a single FOSS program's user interface, anywhere, period.

I repeat: "There is not a single thing wrong with a single FOSS program's user interface, anywhere, period." Ever. In commercial software, people meekly accept the interface they are handed on proprietary software because they have no choice, and all complaints are met with "Buzz off!", and people still buy it anyway. FOSS needs to learn to do the same, or vandals will ruin it for their childish amusement forever. There is no reason to complain about something that you can fix yourself, anyway - that would be why it's open source, you know! If you can't live with a FOSS program as-is and can't program it yourself, hire some off-shore hacker to make you a custom copy for $20. I see it happen all the time.

Update: This point is now getting its own post, Interface Obsession Syndrome.

Rip-Van Winkle - A cousin to the Time Traveler FUD pundit. This user last tried Linux in version 1.0 - maybe somebody at college gave them a Yggdrasil Linux CD - and they didn't like it, and have gone on through life ever since morally convinced that Linux never marched another step forward. Imagine if you judged Windows by a glimpse you caught in 1993 of Windows 3.1 running a hotdog-stand color scheme. Or judged Apple by the MacIntosh system 7 of 1991. The difference between an ordinary misinformed user and a troll is that the troll is now advanced in years and set in his or her ways, and will accuse you of trickery if you try to show them different.

The Red Baron - This is actually a regular troll who just happens to be dishing out their delights in a Linux forum today. So they fly in and zero in on an easy target and buzz away, laughing in the flack. Pick any one of "Not a good gaming platform.", "Can't run this proprietary program.", "I tried it once and it didn't work.", "My gramma couldn't figure it out.", etc. Hold your well-reasoned rebuttal - the Red Baron is far away before you got a chance to react.

The Job Defender - This one's motivations, like the Stockholder, are purely financial. Hey, I can *almost* sympathize! I can imagine that you paid six figures to get a degree and ended up tied to a particular niche in proprietary software, and now you're worried that FOSS will put you out of a job if it catches on. The part where it becomes trolling is when they stubbornly refuse to acknowledge that FOSS creates jobs as well. They bet too much money on the wrong horse, and now it's all tears and self-pity.

Update Why hello, Groklaw readers, welcome to the Z-list! I've expanded the statement about interfaces into a new post, Interface Obsession Syndrome.

Update 7/10/08: If the program I have in the screenshot has you stumped, Béranger guessed it. While you're there, if you think I'm full of beans, you'll like how Béranger says so. He, like, really really opposes the views of my post. A lot.

I think if Bill Gates met a Debian system and installed a program from the repositories, he might just go to his engineers and say, "Why can't it be like this?"

What provoked this thought was this article by Mashable. Mashable, like many other tech blogs, has been following up on the Bill Gates legacy now that he's stepping down. Unlike many other tech blogs, Mashable is not spending its time fawning over him, but is instead taking a harder, grittier look at the behind-the-scenes workings of Redmond.

That in-depth research led to the discovery of an email in which Mr. Gates complains about how hard it is to install Moviemaker. Go check out that email - it really is classic. I was wondering if it might be a hoax, it is so to the point. Stan Schroeder of Mashable arrives at the conclusion:

Essentially, I think that this example brings forth the problem all (or most) giant companies have: they’re stuck up so far up their own ass that they, as a collective, have lost all reasoning about what’s usable and what’s unusable, how their products really function in real life, and - most importantly - what their customers really want.

Ah, where have I heard that before? It makes me think of cathedrals and bazaars. But beyond that, it illustrates the difference between a trusting system and a non-trusting system.

See, GNU/Linux and other FOSS systems trust the user. The apt-get repositories, and other package install methods on other distros, are built on the assumptions that there can be no crime involved in using them. The software is free in both senses of the word. There is no need to validate you as a customer, check the authenticity of your request, or obtain your data. You tell it to do something, and it does it, with the minimum of questions asked.

Try to do the same thing in a Windows system - install Microsoft software to run on a Microsoft system - and the process is thick with suspicion. Who are you, and why do you want this? Are you trying to pirate something? Are you trying to hack the system? Are you authorized? The defensiveness of the system is necessary as a consequence of its proprietary nature. That built-in defensiveness is an overhead. It makes what should be a five-minute task take all day.

I'm really glad to have seen this, because it reveals an important lesson: Bill Gates is just as human as the rest of us, and struggles with the same problems we all do. And far from rubbing his hands and chortling at how proprietary his software is, he's frustrated that it has to be that way. He sounds like every user you've ever heard - the system is just as mysterious to him as it is to the proverbial "Joe Sixpack"!

A theory I've long held is that proprietary software must, of necessity, be harder to use than free software. It has nothing to do with how it is designed. It is built-in to what you are trying to do. If I took apt-get and tried to make it proprietary, I would have to limit the repository to a central server that validates each request, I would have to micromanage the landing point to confirm all of the support packages myself, I would have to tightly control access, and I would have to put the user through a lot of superfluous screening to ensure that their intentions were honorable.

Basically, proprietary software is just FOSS software with a bunch of bureaucracy layered on top of it. And that is why it breaks.

Update: Now that I've read some of the other reactions to this online, I'd like to add that I don't sympathize with Gates at all. It is evident that his empire grew too big for him to manage, but that's what he sowed. He is to blame, by taking the software industry to such an outrageous standard of monopoly.

And speaking of the online reactions: Bo-o-o-oyyy, are the anti-Linux/anti-Apple trolls scrambling to cover this one! Just go to any online forum today and post the word "apt-get"; instant down-mods and flames!

A cool new short cartoon has been released from the Apricot/Peach project. Not only will the link in the title take you to the page at Hackazine with the YouTube clip, but it also has a demo showing how the animation is controlled.

This is an excellent example for anybody out there trying to pick up the complexities of animating a figure, and also goes directly to my own paid work this week.

I loved the movie, too, which is actually funny and as professional as anything you'd see in a theater. I totally ♥ Big Buck Bunny!