Ardi is the new celebrity of the past, in the category of "earliest possible one of us." And I can't help but see that the default monkey head in Blender at least looks related, although with more ears and less hair.

We've been riding the Roller-Coaster of Drama this week in the tech community, and I was considering composing an overview of it. But Hans Bezemer just posted and said it all for me better than I could say it myself.

So go check out his post, where he comes with the Flashlight of Rationality to lead us out of the Trenches of FUD and back to the Sunny Light of Reason. For once I can just sit back and go, "Yeah, what he said!" About evangelists, attempts to divide the community, Mono Kool-Ade, MS's code submission regarding Hyper-V, and Linus Torvalds' quote and how it's been taken out of context. (waaaaay, way way out!)

And of course, some pro-Mono asstroturfers who are now cwying and clutching their bwankies because they didn't succeed in making all the Linux community bloggers go hang themselves.

Glyn Moody also throws in a hand, comparing the current Mono-culture-clash with the old KDE-Qt-vs-Gnome debate.

He gets second mention this time, because, well, 'purist' and 'pragmatist' is a distinction that just can't stretch to cover enough edge cases this time. If you're a purist because you were concerned that bad choices could lead to a crippled platform, doesn't that make you a pragmatist, too? For example, I prefer Free Software tools for 100% pragmatic reasons. When it comes to toys (i.e. games) I'm just as happy with proprietary as open source. Tools vs toys - see, I can do alliteration too!

By the way, the fourth financial quarter just rolled around, and MSFT is tanking like a dead mastodon. We're talking declines as high as 30% here. Ooooooh, so that's why all the distraction!

As I recently told somebody else this week (a plagiarist thug) whom I'd rather not bring up, "Pull my other leg - it plays Pachelbel's Canon in D".

Man, some weeks, you just can't trust anybody!

The title of this post is a search which came into my site, verbatim. (It was a Canadian search through google.ca.) Curios, I searched around the web and didn't encounter any such article. So let's make one!

It's a good way of looking at things for a change. So much ink is devoted to "Linux is ready for the desktop", that we tend to forget to view things from the other angle - what kind of user is right for Linux?

1. You're tired of being bossed around by your computer.
Would you tolerate your car refusing to start until you scanned in your pink slip every time to prove you bought it? Would you put up with parts of your house being walled off because only the architect was allowed access? Would you allow your doctor to withhold information in your medical file from you because it's intellectual property? Then why do you put it with this from a computer you bought and paid for?

2. Your money's tight.
Linux is still free!

3. You're tired of having to buy a new machine every few years.
Linux loves old hardware. Distros which are especially good on old machines include Slackware, Debian, Damn Small Linux, GRML, and Puppy Linux.

4. You're looking to start a home business.
Linux's stability ensures that your most important tool never lets you down.

5. You're sick of worrying about security.
It's quite liberating to no longer have to live in fear of every mouse-click.

6. You want to learn tech skills.
Linux is an educational system. Learning Linux can open the door to learning Unix in general, IT careers, programming and development, and even related tech.

7. You're an autodidact.
Really, this is the most important factor of all. If you cannot handle finding your own answers by searching the web, reading the manual, or checking out a book or two, it's going to be tough. Self-teachers absorb Linux like they absorb everything else. Linux isn't mainstream, so while the smaller share of users are nevertheless helpful, you're still better off making all of the documentation that's already been written count, instead of waiting to have somebody lead you by the hand.

8. You're not that attached to gaming.
Yes, Linux's gaming opportunities are always expanding. but gaming on Linux is still a niche interest. If you're getting burned out with the computer being for nothing but idle entertainment, you might get a new kick out of the intellectual stimulation of learning how to do things with a computer. Maybe you'll write your own games?

9. You have patience.
It takes time to develop skill. It gets really tiresome seeing everybody out there asking "What's the quickest/ easiest way to learn..." The easiest way is to commit yourself to learning and learn. It takes time to learn. This is why a university degree takes years.

10. You're a rebel.
You like to make up your mind to do things your way. you're picky and finicky - you want things to run just so, the way you customize them, not how somebody boxed it for you. Having a bend towards anarchy helps!

Michael Jackson has died, at the age of 50, reports the LA Times Blog. So as soon as I read that, I immediately fired up XMame and loaded a ROM of Michael Jackson's Moonwalker that I had laying around from a past project.

Say what you will about him - he was pretty freaky towards the end there, and I admit I made my share of jokes about him - but the screenshot is how I'll always remember him, as the unbelievably cool entertainer we had in the '80s, not the strange alien we had from the '90s onward.

There'll never be another.

Reddit had a little poll lately to ask which open source programs the community would like to see promoted. Gimp won third place. But, as seen here, Gimp just can't get a break even when it wins...

Yeah, sure, Gimp, the open-source Photoslop. And I suppose Linux is the open-source Windows, and ABIWord is the open-source MS-Word, and Firefox is the open-source Internet Explorer, and PHP is the open-source ASP...

Never mind that the Gimp team states quite clearly that it's not intended to resemble Photoslop in any way, shape, or form, and never will be.

I've heard of feeding trolls before. This goes beyond feeding trolls. This is giving the trolls sugar diabetes!

Here, would everybody like some positive Linux news for a change?

The Indian government launches the FOSSEducation initiative.

The details are there in the link, but I'd just like to point out a few phrases in the article which, as an American, just taste good to say out loud for a change.

"...Gujarat State Education Board(GSEB) to give 50% weightage to Open Source and Linux in Computer subject across all streams (Science, Commerce and Arts)."

A state education board setting a mandate of FOSS/Linux at least half the time! US education boards are still haggling over whether we can teach evolution or not.

"Ministry of Human Resource Development"

You know, as opposed to a "tech czar" in the US, who isn't even an engineer (Robert Cresanti has a BA and a JD), and whose chief concern seems to be making sure nobody listens to music or watches movies without paying.

"the National Mission on Education"

You know, as opposed to "No Child Gets Ahead Left Behind".

"The goal of the project is to replace the use of commercial tools in Indian science and engineering education at the college level"

Isn't that funny? I don't hear anybody in India screaming "Elitist! Elitist! Elitist! Burn the elitist witch for wanting people to learn!" I don't see Indians waving their hands going "But I barely know how to turn a computer on!" I'll bet more than 8% of Indians can tell you what a browser is!

Update And in case you were thinking India is an exception,
Linux Laptops Bestsellers in Germany.
Brazil schools go Linux, 26 thousand computer labs

8/22/09 Meanwhile Corporations are now detaching from the USA.

9/7/09 Meanwhile Russia trains 60 thousand teachers in Linux. What ever happened to that country that wanted to stay ahead of "the Rooskies"?

10/15/09 Meanwhile France - the whole country - is running on open source. Top to bottom, side to side, through and through.

Oh, and Uraguay has given every student a Linux computer. Remember that favorite target of American trolls, the OLPC? It went through anyway! It's getting affordable Linux laptops into children's hands anyway. Americans bitch and moan, Uraguayans progress.

10/27/09 While America continues to decline.

12/28/09 And Alternet asks (finally!) "Are Americans a Broken People?" I mean, how obvious is it anymore?

1/16/10 And even Croatian school textbooks are pro-FOSS - with features on Ubuntu, OpenOffice.org, and a ten-page manual on the Gimp! While America collectively bitches about how hard it is to use.

3/1/10 Where do junior-high students build their own computer? In Italy. Our kids are junior high this year, and here in the US they have yet to have a single, solitary day of computer courses. Not even typing. In Iowa, one of the top academic states in the US.

In the spirit of Douglas Adams' The Meaning of Liff, this is the little list of words I've come up with to describe aspects of Linux life. They don't have to make sense - I'm just being silly.

"adminland" n. "ad-min-land"
The console. The black text terminal you get by hitting Ctrl-Alt-F[2-6] and return to the desktop from with Alt-F7. For myself, it's a natural environment on my own machine. For the rest of the household, it's that weird thing that dad does to your computer from over your shoulder when you're having a problem. I've gotten so good at adminland, that all anybody sees is sudden black, a flurry of flying text, and the desktop again with the problem fixed.

"Appleshock" n. "app-el-shock"
The surprise of unzipping a received file which you expect to be from Windows and instead it's from an Apple user. Oh, yes, there are alternative systems out there, aren't there? So now instead of dealing with spaces in file names or all-uppercase DOS-isms, you're dealing with folders that begin with a double-underscore and duplicate files with a dot in front of them for no apparent reason.

"bootpanic" n. "boot-pan-ick"
The sudden realization that you have to struggle to remember the passwords to the machine you're booting, because it's been running for so long. At least one thunderstorm + power blink per year gives me bootpanic on at least one machine.

"decrappifier" n. "de-crap-i-fye-er"
Any script you bang out in anger to solve some stupid problem that shouldn't happen, regarding the output file of a program. Examples include fixing the bloated output of ABIWord when you save to HTML, converting "smartquotes" and "smartdashes" in a file saved from the web to normal ASCII, stripping the usable text out of a Microsoft ".docx" file, and so on and so on. Always saved with a name like "de-*expletive*-izer.sh", with no comments. Months later, you stumble upon these kinds of scripts and have no idea what they do.

"distromacy" n. "dis-tro-mass-y"
The diplomatic politeness with which you treat another Linux user's distro choice when discussing Linux in a face-to-face meeting, after having experienced the thrill of meeting another Linux user in real life. "Oh, you use Linux too! I'm a __! Oh, you use, ah, use _. Yeah, that's a good one too." Later when walking away and out of earshot you remark to your significant other marveling how anybody could use a crap distro like that.

"grepwords" n. "grep-words"
Any word-based game, e.g. Scrabble, Jumble, crossword puzzle. I cheat by using the 'grep' command and some regexp-foo on /use/share/dict/words to turn up all possible words fitting certain letters and space lengths, which actually turns the word game into a hearty regexp puzzle instead.

"McMove" - v. "mick-move"
From the command line, trying to move a file with 'mv' only to accidentally fire up Midnight Commander by typing 'mc' instead. I do this all the time, the keys are right next to each other. And I hate Midnight Commander, I can never remember how to exit it. On at least one machine I've gone so far as to remove the Midnight Commander package and alias mc to mv in .bashrc.

"mntveto" v. "mount-vee-toe"
To override any Linux distro's own eccentric scheme for mounting removable media. Look, Linux distros, bloody-well put the floppy in the /mnt/floppy/ directory, the CD in the /mnt/cdrom/ directory, the thumbdrive in the /mnt/usb/ directory. Alright? By definition, removable media is going to travel from machine to machine, so being able to quickly find the files on a (usually unfamiliar) machine should be a priority. Yet there are 1000 Linux distros with Borg-like consistency in where they put everything else, and yet all 1000 of them have to come up with their own unique, zany little scheme when it comes to mounting removable media. Stop it, you're not funny!

"mousephony" n. "mouse-fo-ney"
The ungodly noise you can produce by catting /dev/mouse to /dev/dsp (the speakers) and then wriggling your mouse around just to hear the squeals and static. Only works on desktop boxes, and only certain machines. If you're really brave, you can produce some infernal growling static with /dev/urandom going to your speakers. An activity for the extremely bored and braindead. (By the way, you stop this with Ctrl-C. You're welcome.)

"schrodinpackage" n. "shrode-in-pack-age"
Any package which you never use but keep installed anyway because some other program on your system might need it. Removing it might break the system, or it might not. Or it might only stop you from doing something you only rarely ever do, but will be nonetheless distressed when you can't do it any more.

"tabslap" v. "tab-slap"
To quickly close a newly-opened Firefox tab whose web page is threatening to crash Firefox. Misbehaving Flash and Javascript are the chief targets for tabslap.

"user" n. "uz-er"
How I pronounce the Unix standard major directory "/usr/", as in "user share", "user local", etc. Yes, I know that "/usr/" actually is an acronym for "unix system resources" and when I found that out, it struck me as daft. It's the user directory - things that users need go in there!

"VDADD" n. acronym: "Virtual Desktop Attention Deficit Disorder"
The tendency to abuse Linux's multitasking muscle by having way too many programs running in multiple virtual desktops or consoles. You end up flipping back and forth reading a line here, editing a line there, watching another five seconds of a video clip, and eventually coming to Emacs with a window-full of code open and asking, "What was I going to do with this?" Having multiple windows open on one desktop doesn't have the same effect, since it's all there at once where you can't forget any of it.

"Windowwart" - n. "win-dow-wart"
Any misfeature which was stupid design the first time it happened on Windows, and is carried over to Linux just to make Windows immigrants feel at home. Should we also install a clutch pedal in all cars with automatic transmissions so that stick drivers will feel at home when they switch to automatic?

Sanity checks:
Midnight Commander - by dumb luck, I happen to have F9-F12 hotkeyed to open my most commonly used programs; F10 is what I have Fluxbox opening Firefox under. So I have to exit MC via menus.

Mounting - I can recall at least /mnt/removable/, /mnt/media/, and /media/, plus some distros name the media's folder sda1, and I also remember /mnt/thumb/ once. Add to that the other variables - some distros automount, some don't, some require root, some don't, some even pop open a program automatically, which may or may not be the program you were intending to use right now.

Uh, in case you've missed it, Google has released Similar Image Search, a function which allows you to find images similar to the one you're looking at.

And for those of you saying "That's like TinEye!", well, no, since TinEye performs real-time image analysis with an uploaded image and is designed to uncover cases where an image was copied and filtered and reused. Sorta.

The part where my mis-aimed fame comes in? Apparently, one of the favorite ways to test it that most people think of first is to type in "XKCD" - and lo, there in the second result is the parody image I drew for a closing sig on a blog post a year and a half ago. Next thing you know, I'm getting tons of hits.

Oh, well, I think I'm still in the clear, unless Randall Munroe has a copyright on all stick figures or something.

But while everybody's looking for stick-figure comics similar to XKCD, well, I do have a steady webcomic to offer. One that explores the hidden frontier beyond stick-figures! Imagine a universe where people have shapes! Where women have boobs and faces have expressions! Yes, it's all possible with the miracle of modern vector editors...

Like rocket scientists and brain surgeons, programmers have an aura of intelligence about them. Over and over, I tell people I work at home in computers and instantly they mentally add 50 points to my perceived IQ. Well, if I was all that smart, I wouldn't need a spell-checker to tell me that I just misspelled "perceived" (i before e except after c, dammit!).*

Well, the secret is, intelligence doesn't get you nearly as far as you might think. Eric S. Raymond danced around this point in How To Be a Hacker. There's other traits that are even more important than intelligence. These are:

Patience. Number one. People think that there's some heavy wizardry going on when I soak up a new platform in a week. What they don't see is the part where I start out

• (a) Googling,
• (b) following false leads,
• (c) scouring the library and bookstores,
• (d) plowing through the reading of thick manuals for ten hours per day,
• (e) fumbling around trying it out, making at least ten stupid mistakes per minute along the way,
• (f) swearing at the computer, the documentation, and myself,
• (g) finally crufting together a demo app or two and convincing myself that this proves that I understand it.

Confidence. The mantra is "Other people have learned this, therefore, nothing stands in my way of learning it, too."

Curiosity. A certain amount of technology smarts comes from simple monkey-level fascination with your shiny new toy. If you're not interested in it, you'll learn the basics by rote and not understand the "why" behind it. If you're really intrigued, you'll pull all-nighters playing with the new technology, getting it to do tricks for you. New ideas pop into your head and make you giggle and run to the keyboard to try them out. This, then, is the real talent - being like a little kid wanting to run around exploring stuff. It seems that you either hang onto that as you grow up, or you don't.

Memory. Lots and lots of technical detail. Computer skills will quickly overflow your memory buffer. Some ways of coping I use:

• Written notes. Studies show that even if you never re-read these notes, writing something down helps solidify it in your mind.
• Bookmarks. My rule is, any page that solves a problem I had gets bookmarked for later reference in case I have the same or similar problem again.
• Docs. This is what manual pages are for - not for learning raw, but as a post-learning refresher. I can't tell you right now the option to sed to make it take two or more 's///' statements in a single run, but I know I've used it before and can find it again in a second.
• Keeping old code. I have programs that I'll never need to run again, but are worth keeping because, should I have to solve a similar problem again, I can read over my old code to re-learn how to approach it.

But anyway, the more you remember, the less you have to look up.

Blogging! Similar to the point above, when I make a "HOWTO" post, I'm doing it just as much for me as for anyone else. This is especially true for graphics techniques. Besides this, there's a technique called "second person learning", whereby you teach yourself something more thoroughly after explaining it to someone else. And of course, blogging culture encourages the sharing of information, so you get responses in the comments that will teach you something new as well.

* Or when sounding like a or in the sentence: "Neither leisure, seismic protein seized the weird, foreign height."