How's the grass over there?

Each year (ok not last year) around this time, my boss calls me into his office to hand me a letter with my new salary. Today was that day and though it was a better day than last year's, which never came, it was somewhat bittersweet.

Sweet to receive something, bitter to receive so little.

"Right Sourcing"

A few weeks back, I had to call tech support at a major computer manufacturer to report a failed disk drive. After being on hold for a few minutes, a voice cut through the muzak, barely audible. The woman on the other end of the line was not a native speaker of the English language.

Our connection was not the greatest. Imagine the worst mobile phone call you've ever received, now imagine that you're speaking to someone who is a non-native speaker of your language over that same connection.

I spent 15 minutes trying to explain my situation to this person. Eventually, she gave me another number to call, though it took several tries before I had all the digits correctly transcribed.

I hung up and dialed the number I'd scratched down. Again with the muzak. After a few minutes, I was treated to that friendly Texas drawl and actually received the help I needed.

F year reunion

This is the summer of my F year high school reunion. Imagine having eight fingers on each hand. Peace to the class of. See you in five more years.

I haven't had much to say of late. Most of my contributions have been to the backend, feedback and dynamic MySQL based menus. I recently moved the database from one server to another and was able to abstract the host information so the system now works on any host.

Next up, a way of adding entries via a web interface. Currently I'm editing a text file and importing it into MySQL. Also, add a publication date field and code to select based on publication date.

I'd also like to create a downloads area for releasing programs into the wild. I don't have anything technically advanced just some things I've written to aid me in my job.

Come back soon.

Magic DB Driven Menu

Over at Reames.org Randy's written about his navigation menu and has given a segment of the code which drives the menu, leaving the current page on the list of menu items in an "unlinked" state.

It makes sense. Why should a link to the current page appear on the navigation menu? Sure, it's easier to just have a static list of links, but doing it dynamically makes the page more interesting, even if it is subtle.

Before I came across Randy's code, I had just finished converting the items in the navigation menu on the left from a static list to a dynamically generated list, pulled from a database table. I wanted to be able to keep my navigation in a database but I also liked Randy's "Magic Menu" implementation.

I was able to accomplish (mostly) the same functionality as Randy using the following code:

   for ($i = 0; $i < link =" mysql_fetch_array($result);" href="\">" .
          $link[name] . "</a>";
    }
 } ?>

Essentially, this is the same as Randy's code though it's database driven and is done using a loop rather than a series of conditionals. The problem with this is that the first time the page index.php page is loaded, the "Home" link is not "unlinked". I have yet to find an elegant solution that I like and at this point there are too many other things to work on. Thanks for the idea Randy. I hope you don't mind me stealing from you.

Feedback is on

I believe the feedback code is functional, though I have not tested it extensively. I originally had an email field in, but after very little consideration, decided to drop it. I wasn't going to print it on the feedback section and therefore didn't really see a need for it.

Let's buy SCO

Out of curiosity I took a look at SCO's market capitalization which is the current price of the company's stock times the number of shares. As of this writing, SCO's "market cap" is at $115 million give or take a few dollars.

How many Linux users are there in the world? According to counter.li.org there are currently 18 million of us. Though I'm guessing there's even more than that. I know I've personally never registerd my machines.

Given that there are 18 million of us, would you be willing to fork over $100 to buy SCO? I'd personally put up $500 (maybe even $1000 if my wife will let me) of my own money to purchase SCO stock in an effort to purchase the company and free the cherished Unix patents and copyrights. We could be done with this whole mess for once and for all.

What do you say? Sure, it's a pipe dream, but think of the possiblities and consider the alternative if SCO wins its suit agains IBM.

Feedback -- in name only

There's a feedback form now, but it doesn't actually function yet. Patience. You'll get your chance to rip me a new one.

I came across this site earlier this evening. My god, I nearly had to get a side transplant. One of the funniest "blog ridicule" blogs I've seen.

Hooray for Brownback!?

I never thought I'd find common ground with the conservative Republican Kansas Senator Sam Brownback, but today a link to this article crossed my desktop and I found myself sending a message of gratitude and support to Senator Brownback.

Brownback has drafted legislation which will regulate digital rights management systems and would "scale back the ability of record labels, movie studios and software companies to use anticopying technology."

Under Brownback's bill, the Federal Trade Commission can ban DRM systems "that limit a consumer's right to resell any 'digital media product'".

Surprise, surprise a representative from the RIAA doesn't like the legislation and actually says of the DMCA that it was a "carefully crafted compromise and balance struck by the Congress." Whoever this rep is wouldn't know a carefully crafted compromise and balance if it was sitting on his or her face.

Will Linux Die?

John C. Dvorak has written an article titled "Killing Linux" regarding SCO's lawsuit against IBM and the affect it may have on Linux.

Dvorak argues the Linux community is taking the suit far too lightly and that we have put our "collective heads in the sand." I suppose he's right about this. I'm not overly concerned that I'll have to fork over fees to SCO or that my beloved Linux is going to be an outlaw OS. How could the courts possibly enforce the verdict? Will they make criminals out of all Linux users?

Dvorak lays out four possible scenarios.

First, that SCO wins and then goes after Linux companies and users. "Confusion reigns. Linux dies."

The second scenario is largely the same, but SCO only concentrates on specific violations by IBM and "uses the victory as a precednt to go after the tainted code used by others. Corporations panic and flock to Microsoft."

Scenario three is that IBM stalls the proceedings and Linux "loses momentum, then dies."

Under the fourth scenario, the case is thrown out and Linux continue on.

Dvorak leaves out another possiblity, SCO wins and goes after Linux. It turns out that Linux does contain IP that belongs to SCO. Linux developers marshall together to rewrite vast portions of the kernel to "code around" the problem and Linux continues on.

I don't see Linux users giving up so easily. There's too much at stake. Linux started as a hobby for Linus and has exploded because it works better than many proprietary products it competes against and because it was put together by a volunteer army of enthusiasts. Of course, we can't forget the contributions made by companies like IBM and Red Hat, Suse, etc., but Linux was growing in popularity even before those companies jumped in.

Linux is not going to go away, not anytime soon. Even under the worst case scenario, there will be people around the globe who carry on. This genie can't be put back into the bottle.

Nevertheless, it's going to be very interesting to see how this whole mess plays out. Enjoy the show.

Free the Mouse

Over at Lessig's Blog he's announced a petition that you should sign if you support the idea of a public domain.

If you want more information about what Lessig and company are trying to accomplish, jump over to the website for "The Eric Eldred Act".

Valid XHTML 1.0 Strict!

Who can say how long it will last, but for now and for only this page, the site validates as XHTML 1.0 Strict. Yes, that is exciting. It was one of my goals to try and make this site adhere to some standard. Now to get the rest of the site in order.

:wn

Last night as I was cleaning up some of the code for this site, I found myself needing to edit multiple files. I suppose there's an easier way to do this using sed or something like it, but I didn't bother taking the time to figure out what it is. Is there an "in place" editing mode for sed?

I played around with something like the following:

sed -e 's/pattern/replacement pattern/' *.php

And that seems logical, but sed just spews the results to the screen and I need a way to have the results replace the files that match *.php. Surely there's an "edit in place" mode for sed and I just don't know it. Let's face it, there's more about sed that I don't know than I do know.

Regardless, I found a fairly quick way to edit all *.php files using vi. For those who don't know, like I didn't, when editing multiple files in vi one can type ":wn" while in command mode and this will write any changes to the current file and move on to the next one.