Entries by Des Traynor

Alright, time for another book review. This post will be discussing Pauls Grahams book, Hackers and Painters. Paul Graham is a rich man, famous for an impressive start up company (Viaweb) and some outrageous and offensive quotes such as... The programmers you'll be able to hire to work on a Java project won't be as smart as the ones you could get to work on a project written in Python. and another classic At this point, anyone proposing to run Windows on servers should be prepared to explain what they know about servers that Google, Yahoo, and Amazon don't. Paul Graham is another famous programming blogger and this book is a mixture of the best of his articles online, plus extra content derived from speeches he has given in the past. So what do I make of it?

I still frequently get emails from people who I don't know saying "Thanks for your Latex template", which is always nice to hear. It also reminds me that I should probably post the materials here, so that google will find them a bit easier. (Currently the only way to find them is through the Minds events page)

I've always found it funny how in our CSSE degree your final year thesis accounts for 25% percent of your final mark, but it evaluates students on material that the course simply doesn't cover, namely

• Scientific Writing: If you can't write a good report, its unlikely you'll do well. However if you can't develop a good program you can still score surprisingly high
• Software Engineering: Bit of a contentious one here, in my opinion things like Unit testing, Bug Tracking, Source Control, Specifications, UML form the basis of Software Engineering. It is basically Industry Best Practices, but taught in University. Unfortunately we don't cover any of the above (or at least I didn't in my couse)
• Presentational Skills: You have to do a 10 minute presentation of the thesis, and effectively sell it to your markers.

Code Quality, and System Design always seem to play second fiddle to a thesis jam packed with internet quotes, often I have seen good projects score poorly, and weak projects score average. It just doesn't seem right to me. That said, I think the whole thing should be done away with. If I had my way your "thesis" should result in a 6-8 paper in the following manner...

If your project was science based then you would do it in an academic style (E.g. 2 column, graphs, Addressing research questions etc). The emphasis would be on data gathered, results, significance etc. There would be little concern about system design, as thats not what you are selling yourself on.

If your project was a Software Engineering one (i.e. one with an end product, either finished or prototype) then you effectively write a whitepaper complete with pretty screenshots, and promoting all the features and also explaining the internal architecture of the system with appropriate diagrams. You would also be expected to supply your source tree/ testing data etc.

What's nicest about this is that it's far harder to hide bullshit in an 8 page paper than it is in a 40 page thesis. The workload on staff and student would be drastically reduced without any drop in standards. What do people think of this? Please leave a comment!

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But I originally wanted to mention my scientific writing webpage. It can be found here: www.minds.may.ie/~dez/latex/ It contains rough instructions for installing latex, it also contains a sample thesis file, and some handouts on scientific writing. All in all its a pretty good deal I'm not gonna go into why you should use LaTeX. I believe it to be better. I am most certainly not alone. If you're really interested in Why, leave a comment, I don't want to litter the weblog with anti-Microsoft Word sentiments, its a decent enough product.

If you wan't a good visual editor for Latex (i.e. a Microsoft Word Style editor) use Lyx , which Baruch has contributed code to. Also available are TexMaker(All platforms) and Kile (Linux only)

I have just finished reading a book compiled, edited and introduced by Joel Spolsky and released by Apress. "The Best Software Writing I" is a collection of some of the best articles on software development, and management written on various weblogs over the past few years. Joel expects it to become a frequent enough release, so it should be a series worth looking out for.

Borrowed from brevity.org, here is a list of all the articles you will find in the book. I am presuming that since these originated on the web, and are still available that I amn't infringing anyones rights by linking to them.

• Ken Arnold - Style Is Substance
• Leon Bambrick - Award for the Silliest User Interface: Windows Search
• Michael Bean - The Pitfalls of Outsourcing Programmers
• Rory Blyth - Excel as a Database
• Adam Bosworth - ICSOC04 Talk
• danah boyd - Autistic Social Software
• Raymond Chen - Why Not Just Block the Apps That Rely on Undocumented Behavior?
• Kevin Cheng and Tom Chi - Kicking the Llama
• Cory Doctorow - Save Canada's Internet from WIPO
• ea_spouse - EA: The Human Story
• Bruce Eckel - Strong Typing vs. Strong Testing
• Paul Ford - Processing Processing
• Paul Graham - Great Hackers
• John Gruber - The Location Field is the New Command Line
• Gregor Hohpe - Starbucks Does Not Use Two-Phase Commit
• Ron Jeffries - Passion
• Eric Johnson - C++ -- The Forgotten Trojan Horse
• Eric Lippert - How Many Microsoft Employees Does it Take to Change a Lightbulb?
• Michael "Rands" Lopp - What to do when you're screwed
• Larry Osterman - Larry's Rules of Software Engineering #2: Measuring Testers by Test Metrics Doesn't
• Mary Poppendieck - Team Compensation (pdf)
• Rick Schaut - Mac Word 6.0
• Clay Shirky - A Group is its Own Worst Enemy
• Clay Shirky - Group as User: Flaming and the Design of Social Software
• Eric Sink - Closing the Gap Part 1, Part 2
• Eric Sink - Hazards of Hiring
• Aaron Swartz - PowerPoint Remix
• why the lucky stiff - A Quick (and Hopefully Painless) Ride Through Ruby (with Cartoon Foxes)

There are some very good articles in there, and some very funny ones. If you're not the sort of person who reads books, then at least grab a couple of the titles above that interest you and scroll through them. There really is some good stuff there.

Also, I have realised that some of my non-nerd friends read this blog, so for those I would recommend the two cartoon articles, "Award for the Silliest User Interface ", and "Excel as a database", as the "jokes" there can be understood by anyone.

For the nerds/developers I'd recommend "Great Hackers" by Paul Graham, and "Starbucks Does Not Use 2-Phase Commit". They are both pretty insightful. Also, if you read and enjoyed this book, then Joels other software book "Joel On Software" is a must read.

Finally, for anyone who intends to release software through the web (either commercial, or GPLed) please read "Closing the Gap 2", as it hits the nail on the head. Think about it this way: If getfirefox.com required you to fill out a registration form, or provide an email address before you could download the browser would it still have reached 25 million downloads? Doubtful.

In closing, www.bookpool.com are offering 50% off Apress books, which is well worth looking into. (Thats where I recommend you purchase this book, Click on the image to be taken there) Also, another handy link is The 46 Best Ever Free Utilities for Windows)

Ubuntu is a great desktop operating system. You can learn about it here: http://ubuntu.com/ If you are interested in giving it a whirl, the good people will even post you a CD, visit http://shipit.ubuntu.com if you are interested in that.

However Ubuntu is somewhat restricted in the sense that every single piece of software they ship is 100% free in all senses. So as a result, you can't do certain things such as play mp3s, watch dvds, see flash animations and the like. These are restricted formats. So, I've deduced a couple of commands to install all the necessary plugins/software you'll need. I'll make it easy to copy and paste them.

Part One: Unlock the extra repositories

Read this article. If you are having trouble with this bit, mail me or ask on the ubuntuforums. Its not too tough, just deleting a few # symbols.

Part Two: Run this command

Run the following command, and then sit back and have a cup of tea,

sudo apt-get install flashplayer-mozilla gftp gstreamer0.8-plugins gstreamer0.8-lame gstreamer0.8-ffmpeg w32codecs libdivx4linux lame sox ffmpeg mjpegtools vorbis-tools libdvdcss2 mplayer-386 mplayer-fonts mozilla-mplayer gnomebaker xfonts-intl-european gsfonts-x11 msttcorefonts xfonts-intl-phonetic reaplayer  sun-j2re1.5 

This will take a while, some of this will be installed from the CD , the majority will come from the net. On a fast conection e.g. not dialup it takes about 10 minutes.

Part Three: Tidy Up

Run the following commands and sit back, they just just tell you computer about your new plugins and fonts

• sudo gst-register-0.8
• sudo fc-cache -f -v
• sudo cp /etc/fonts/local.conf /etc/fonts/local.conf_backup
• sudo gedit /etc/fonts/local.conf

You should now have an editor open, scroll to the end and find this section...

<!--
  <match target="font">
    <edit mode="assign" name="autohint">
      <bool>true</bool>
    </edit>
</match>
-->

And delete the <!-- at the start , and the --> at the end , leaving you with the following...

  <match target="font">
    <edit mode="assign" name="autohint">
      <bool>true</bool>
    </edit>
  </match>

Part Four Log Out, and Log In

This isn't really necessary , but its the easiest way to tell everything to update itself. You should now be able to play dvds, burn dvds, listen to mp3s, see all the different fonts, watch flash, and watch mpegs etc. All done!

Epilogue:

Before the Windows boyz come dissing, let me just point out some things that base windows installs can't do.

1. Create or View a PDF
2. Create or View a DVD
3. View a flash Animation

I'm not trying to mock Windows, I'm just pre-empting the any silly comments saying "OMG even the good Linuxes need stuff done with them"

------------------------

Product -------------------------------- Customer

The above picture describes the Gap between the GNU\Linux desktop Operating System and a patricularily jolly customer off the street. For a sale to take place, this gap must be closed. Eric Sink says that the gap represents

all of the issues and obstacles that are preventing the customer from making the purchase:

So lets have a look at some of these obstacles to the potential customer

1. The customer has never heard of your product This is not so much of a problem for Linux nowadays, people are starting to hear about Linux regularly, you can find it mentioned in newspapers, technical tv shows, radio stations and the like. Some economic theory that I learned back in 1999 and can't remember spoke of the marginal increase that leads to an exponential one. At some point a successful product will start to advertise itself. Lets have a look at that...
   
   
   
   Think of that great song you heard one night on MTV (back when they played > 2 songs per day), and for a while no one heard of it, then maybe a week later you hated the song just because it was everywhere. That's when a marginal rate leads to an exponential rate. The figures above are representative of my opinion of where Linux stands today. I would say that 1 out of 10 people who use computers have heard of Linux at the moment.
   
2. The customer doesn't know enough about your product
   This is definitely a problem for Linux. Most people have extremely fragile knowledge of Linux. Every week or so I hear serious misconceptions e.g. "Linux is a program that gets rid of viruses", "Linux is what they use in The Matrix" , "Linux can't run I.E and can't connect to the net", "Linux is illegal" etc..
   As Linux grows, this fragile knowledge will grow too.
3. Your product is too expensive
   Fan: No It's not, Its FREE!!!
   Me: Yeah, free as in price maybe!
   Fan: No, Free as in Freedom , Read this.
   Me: Yeah that doesn't change the fact that it'll take an hour or so to install, and a few days to get it going the way you want it. Common wisdom says that "Time is Money", so Linux isn't really free in that sense.
   But all that said, Linux is far far cheaper than it has been. Live CDs and ready made distributions have made the difference.
4. The customer needs two levels of management approval for the purchase
   You can interpret this as corporate speak, but look at the home pc sense of the word. Many potential Linux users use a family computer. They can't just change the operating system without asking/telling someone. They are also afraid of breaking it, as that's where all their parents work files are. This is a confidence issue with the product, Most parents haven't heard of Linux, so they'll play it safe and say No. As time goes by this will hopefully change. Ditto for the corporate level in my opinion.
5. Your product lacks a feature the customer needs
   Linux can't play games well in my opinion. Linux can't run Microsoft Word, and it can't run Adobe Photoshop. On some laptops it won't hibernate, and you may have trouble with the Wireless card. These are all obstacles to it replacing Windows, but not obstacles to people adopting it as a second operating system in a dual boot set up. I realise that Winex and Cedega make it possible to run certain applications, and Crossover office certainly does a good job with the office suite. These all cost money, Try explaining to someone why they should change operating system, then buy a few products, just to get back to where they already were
   
6. Your product doesn't interoperate with the customer's other stuff
   As I said in the previous points there are ways to get just about anything interoperable with Linux, its just that sometimes they are expensive ways. Things like iPods and digital cameras etc. are pretty much universally supported, so this isn't a major issue for customers in my opinion. The challenge here is assuring the user that everything will work okay.
7. Your product isn't mature enough to meet the customer's expectations
   This one could be contentious. Linux has been around for ages, but has been unknown for most of that time. When it comes to trusting someone, which is more important, their age, or how long you have known them?
   The large gap between XP and LongHorn has meant that Linux has caught up on the usability/desktop side of things. USB pen drives now auto mount read/write in general Linux does a better job of this than Windows. Outlook is matched pretty much with Evolution, Firefox works on both, for the most part Linux applications (when they exist) are equivalent or better. I doubt maturity will be an issue for Linux.

So back to that gap that you saw at the top, how do we close that. There are two method for shrinking it

• Move the product to the right. -->
  This equates to advertising, which has been a problem in Open Source Software for a long time. It also means making your product better. Great products are very close to the customer, think of the iPod. Everyone knows what it is, everyone has one or wants one. Everyone sees white headphones and gets jealous. This is a result of the iPod advertisements, the iPod advertising itself (as explained above) and the iPod being a Really Good Product(tm).
• Move the customer to the left. <--
  This is when you find people who might use your product and persuade them to do so. Its basically hunting. Apple know that their computers and operating systems will sell to people who like pretty things with no corners. They use the iPod as their pimp to attract people in. Chances are someone who is in love with an iPod will soon fall in love with a Mac too. The iPod is effectively picking the customers who would be impressed with a Macintosh. (The iShuffle is just there to pick out the customers with too much money)

So what can Linux do to help itself, well it should look at how Firefox claimed 25 million users (8% of the market) in the space of two years and see what did it for them. Asa Dotzler says its down to 4 things.

• Migration - Its easy to switch to Firefox, its not easy to switch to Linux
• Stability - Stability isn't a problem with Linux as long as you stay within your distribution. If you install extras, then you enter dependency hell, where Eclipse wants libstdio 3.2.1 where as Nautilus was 3.3.1. If all distributions were as good as Ubuntu, as large as Debian, and as "out of the box" as Fedora then this would not be a problem.
  
• Simplicity - Firefox looks like its rivals, it just does things better. Linux looks and behaves differently to Windows, some things are easier, some things are harder, but most things are different which basically throws away years of muscle memory.
• Comfort - This is the confidence problem that I spoke of earlier. People don't feel at ease in foreign areas. They will press the Windows key and wonder why nothing happens.

How many "Use Firefox" logos do you see around the net? Hundreds/Thousands The simple reason for this is that its an easy switch that makes sense. At the moment I can't say the same about Linux, that's why I don't have a logo on my site yet

(For the record I am a full-time user of Ubuntu Linux, Fedora Core Linux, and Windows XP)

Please leave me some comments.