Tread lightly on the things of earth

This short document from the Samba team addresses the concern over Samba’s future given Microsoft’s current attack of the GNU GPL (under which Samba is licensed). It’s one of the most courteous and effective “kiss my ass” statements I’ve ever seen.

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“The idea of a Geek Political Action Committee (PAC) to save the Net’s commons from Hollywood is quickly catching fire.” Reading this whole article, I’m reminded: Man, I love the way Doc writes.

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I’m a Unix guy who prefers Mac OS X on Apple hardware over everything else for hands-on use. But I use Debian GNU/Linux and NetBSD on PC hardware nonstop, too, and find the result infinitely preferable to using Microsoft Windows.

So naturally I think the ultimate upgrade is to buy a modern Mac, run Mac OS X, and enjoy the whole Mac scene and the whole “Linux” scene (via fink) simultaneously. It’s extremely cool.

But if the choice is constrained to PC hardware, the upgrade decision is still compelling: Keep using Windows? or Switch to a Unix OS (like Linux)? This article nicely lays out the pros and cons you’d want to consider, better than I think I’ve seen elsewhere.

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I like Al Fasoldt’s observation that “if you’ve tried to get your Windows PC to behave itself lately, you know that nobody is actually in charge on the Windows side of things. Dell blames Microsoft, Microsoft blames Gateway, and the store where you bought the Windows PC blames you.”

In contrast, of course, at Apple “the computer and the operating system, the hardware and the software, were made by the same company. They were made by people who actually speak to each other. They built good hardware and good software, and they knew what they were doing.”

For me, the best reason for using a modern Mac is, as Al says, “My Mac … keeps me smiling every minute I’m at the keyboard.” Yes, yes, yes.

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What a great article on coffeemaking! I thought I was completely uptown buying (no doubt stale) whole roasted beans and grinding them right before I brew. Here I see that the roasting is as important as the brewing …

Let’s see: Green coffee beans, roasted yourself in an inexpensive roaster, are (1) cheaper than roasted beans, (2) last a lot longer, and (3) make a much better cuppa. Hmmm, I think I’m ready to add roasting to my morning coffee regimen.

Afterthought: I sense an analogy comin’ on:

Green coffee : Storebought roast coffee
  :: Free software : Much commercial software

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One of my favorite features of OmniWeb is its URL shortcuts. This feature lets me type, say, “blog” in the browser location field and have it instantly open my local Radio desktop website, http://127.0.0.1:5335/. Or type “gg radio userland” to return Google search results on the words radio and userland.

I just realized Mozilla lets you do the same thing — woo-hoo! (Verified in Mach-O Mozilla on Mac OS X, my current favorite Mozilla flavor.)

You assign a keyword to a Mozilla bookmark, and use the keyword as the shortcut. And you can use “%s” as a placeholder for variable data in the URL, like so:

Name: Google
Location: http\://www.google.com/search?q=%s
Keyword: gg
Example: gg radio userland

Excellent resources: http://www.mozilla.org/docs/end-user/keywords.html
http://developer.netscape.com/evangelism/docs/articles/bookmarks/
http://www.deftone.com/blogzilla/archives/keyword_searching.html

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