Several reasons to “Like” something like……

……Linux.  Windows (the current versions) are good operating systems. Linux (the kernel, and it’s myriad distributions) is a good operating system.  I am a Linux sysadmin but I mostly use a Windows desktop. Why? dunno. Guess it’s just that wherever I work/ed the desktops are almost always Windows and Linux is mostly used on the server side. I am always wondering if I could switch to a Linux-only household but I always end up getting some form of Winschmoes on my hardware due to this and that. So what have I learned about Linux that would still make me press the “Like” button wherever I meet it on the ‘net?  Several things, but in a long (lol) nutshell:

1)  Speed    (always important)

2)  Ease of use   (Always getting better these days)

3) Low hardware requirements   (has always been that way and it still runs a full desktop on  512MB RAM in 2011.  I dare you to try that with today’s Windows)

4) Long-term hardware support   (my hardware and peripherals from 2001 are still working with Debian Squeeze)

5) Its freedom to tinker with the innards   (It’s like a game… try something, crash, try something, crash, try something else, WIN, LEARN, NEVER BURN!)

6) Variety

7) Embedability

8\) Stability (mind you, on the desktop side my Windows has rarely crashed since Vista too)

9) The geek factor (the main  reason that many homo non-technicus still mistakenly avoid it for)

10) It runs on Arm

11) It’s fed me and my family since 2003. Before that,  food grew from UNIX trees

12) It runs on phones (i.e. it RUNS on phones, not crawls on phones)

13) It’s mostly “free” (unless you pay for commercial support)

14) You can talk to almost anyone involved in its creation (Want to bet who would most likely reply to an e-mail between Bill Gates and Linus Torvalds?)

15) The communit/y/ies around it

16) The projects it spawns (Open Pandora, Open Moko, Ben NanoNote, Beagle boards, OLPC, plug computing etc.)

17) That it’s the re-incarnation of what old-school computing was and still should be all about: -  freedom, innovation and learning.

18) Tux the Penguin. Choose the cuter one between these:

HA! Thought so!

19) The story behind it’s creation and evolution (although “The Pirates of Silicon Valley” deserves some kudos too)

20) That it’s a viable alternative to “that” or “that” other operating system, because choice is good.

Just to end this rant, I’ll conclude this episode just by focusing a bit on my fourth point,  i.e. Long-term hardware support.

In 2001, I built a PIII PC and bought an image  scanner (around the time when they became affordable for me). I bought/installed Windows XP and everything chugged along happily (in between crashes) until the day my PIII became too un-upgradably slow for Winblowz so I bought a laptop with Windoes sVista and found out that my Genius ColorPage HR6-V2 scanner was no longer supported, either by Windbloz or the manufacturer, who both do their utmost to get you to always part with more monies for the “new and improved” versions when your perfectly usable hardware is still in fine working order and was doing a good job on the older version.

So, since my PIII PuCee wouldn’t run sVista  and I don’t like throwing away working stuff just because Bill G and/or the h/w manufacturer says so I decided to put Linux on my old PIII and try my luck getting my faithful scanner to work again. LO and BEHOLD, I install Xsane on me old PIII on Debian Squeeeeeze and my cheap Genius ColorPage HR6-V2 scanner comes back to life turning out better scans than ever. And this without even having to run any “new hardware blizzard”, and in 2011. So now my faithful PIII is my Linux workhorse, my arm cross-compilation environment, my analogue TV, my scanning tool, my upload server for me and my friends, my internet gateway to all the IP’able stuff in my home network and everything else that Wingoes is no longer good for.

And just for kicks, folks, I remind you that this is hardware bought in 2001 (PIII with 768MB RAM) that still runs faster with Linux than my Dual Core 1.5GHz/2GB RAM laptop using Winslows sVista.

Peace,

relliker.

Got to work later than usual on Monday…….

Right. So now I have started working with a company that likes to check the likelihood of your coming to work with an explosive belt around your midriff and I was asked to bring a Police Conduct certificate as part of my background checks.  Fine with me, standard procedure nowadays anyway.

The funny thing is when I ACTUALLY went to pick up the certificate from the Police Criminal Records Office at 07:20 a.m.  so I wouldn’t be late for work ………….

If pictures are still worth a thousand words then the following is approximately a 3,000 word long cussing session:

I get there at 07:20 a.m. Good, I’m first in queue…..should have my certificate in 11 minutes.

………….

………………..

Now I know why the police always arrive late at a crime scene………

Have a nice day!

relliker

Search engines can steal and patent your ideas

DISCLAIMER: ” This is one of my many ‘gut feelings’. I have no proof that this actually happens and have no intention of looking for said proof. Other than that, I think that it can, and probably is, done. If you take any action based on what I write and lose your life-savings in court fees I will not accept to be blamed for your stupidity.”

Now let’s go……

The inventor sat down at his desk, 3D sketchpad loaded, notepad loaded, pencil and paper at hand for those marks that you can’t just quickly annotate to your digital text. “Wait!”, he said. “What if I’m just re-inventing the wheel and somebody has already thought of and patented my idea?”. “Shall I troll through the patent site looking for something that might be similar to my invention?”. “Why not?”. “How do I find or not find what I want?”. “AHA! Use the in-built search facility.” “BAAAAADDD idea”. “Hmmm…..maybe somebody in another country has thought of it. I’ll use  a public search engine for a world-wide search”. “EVEN WORSE IDEA”.

I’ll tell you why.

Everyday millions of people run billions of queries in search engines. Most of them are looking for something that is already there. In most cases they find what they are looking for. In some cases the search engine spews out a “0 results found for your query” or something similar. If you search for (for example) “car accident” you will probably get a few thousands or millions of search results. When was it that car accidents did not make online news? Look for U2, porn, OSS or FOSS, Linux, speakers, audio etc. You’ll find it all there.

But what if you are looking for something that you hope is not there? So you have just come up with an idea for a new sex toy but do not want to go through all the hassle of sketching and documenting the design before you are sure that your “Vibrating ball tingling orgasm inducer” has not already been invented. So what do you do. You search for it on the internet, in one of the gazillion public search engines, or built into private websites. You go to http://www.myfavouritesearchenginealwaysfindsit.com and start typing in your query.

“Vibrating” (2 million results). “Vibrating testicle” (1 million results). “Vibrating testicle tingler” (1024 results). “Vibrating testicle tingler orgasm” (50 results). “Vibrating testicle tingler orgasm inducer” (0 results).

“YAY! Nobody’s yet thought of my ‘Vibrating testicle tingler orgasm inducer’. I can safely work on my design and apply for a patent. I’m gonna be rich!!!” Yeah.

One very nice thing about search engines is that they index all the information they gather so that quick search results can be provided.

But what is an index? For those non tech-savvy folks out there, an index is like a catalogue of  keywords (like what you type in your favourite search engine) that is saved as part of a database to match queries faster than actually looking through each record in said database. Once some of your keywords match something in an index, the search engine gives you a list of URIs that it thinks could contain the data you are looking for on the ‘net. OOhhh cool! Yep!!

Now what happens when your search does not match anything in your list of keywords? The search engine gives up and gives you the famous ’0 results found’. OK, but where does this lead to?

To build a better index so that searches are ever so faster and accurate, search engines keep a copy of all keywords that people type in so that if something that was not so popular yesterday becomes popular today the index is rebuilt so that people looking for what has become popular today can be found faster. Now notice what I wrote in the sentence before this one. Quote: “search engines KEEP A COPY OF ALL KEYWORDS”. And where do these search engines keep this copy? In a database table, of course.

So, if you regularly type in ‘free porn’ in your favourite goobing or bingle search engine these words are saved and used to build a better index of free porn for you so that you can get your fix faster. All this data is saved in what is called a table. A table is a ‘container’ (think of it like a folder or directory in your computer) in a database. Some of these ‘tables’ are temporary and get deleted immediately after the data in them is no longer required but a lot of these tables are PERMANENT and grow and grow when the database engine (or program) writes new keywords and combinations of keywords to them. These are the keywords that you are typing in your search engine. So now we have established that all the searches that you do on a search engine are PERMANENTLY STORED. “So what?”, you say. “Goobing and Bingle don’t know my name and where I live so my wife will never know what I was searching for if I delete my search history in my browser.” Correct, BUT……

This brings us to today’s subject. If you are an inventor and are searching on the net to see if your idea has already been thought of and patented, your searches are being saved too, like everybody else’s. If you narrow your search and it gives you 0 results this is ESPECIALLY even MORE SIGNIFICANT than searches that give thousands or millions of results. Searches that give no result can be/are saved in separate tables so that the search engine provider can look through these queries and ‘innnocently’ find out why his search engine gave 0 results. In this way he can build a better index and the next time, you will find what you are looking for, EXCEPT THAT THIS IS EXACTLY HOW YOU HAVE JUST GIVEN AWAY YOUR PRECIOUS INNOVATIVE INVENTION that was going to make you rich. Maybe the search engine produced 0 results because nobody has thought of your idea yet BUT NOW YOUR IDEA IS PERMANENTLY RECORDED in the search engine database through the keywords that you used in your search.

Since queries in search engines usually produce results more than not, such queries are lost among the billions of other queries done everyday but YOUR particular query that gave 0 results is saved in a separate container that is regularly visited by the search engine provider for optimising their search engine indexes. Now, your search engine provider has learned that the “Vibrating testicle tingler orgasm inducer” has not yet been invented and promptly applies for a patent himself before you have even started your 3D sketch or have written one word in your digital or paper notepad. HA!

This was lesson number x to the nth of how using the internet can be bad for you. So how do you find if your idea is patented or not without using the ‘net? I DON’T KNOW. Maybe you can physically go to your country’s patent office and physically search through the millions of patent files in the office. I wouldn’t use the office computer to search through the patent office’s internal database though coz that is just another search engine and you never know who can be sifting through your queries even as you are typing them in!!

Sorry if I just ruined your financial invention-based future and made you paranoid but you must be aware that search engines CAN DO EVIL too.

Peace,

Relliker