Author: Steven Garrity

Do we all need a personal system administrator?

by Steven Garrity

My family has embraced the home computer. They use Hotmail to keep in touch with relatives. They use a scanner, despite absolutely terrible software that came with it (Canon). They use MSN Messenger to chat with friends (a lot). They use Microsoft Word to write papers, letters, and memos and print them off on an Epson printer ink-jet.

The trouble is, every few weeks, they’re Windows XP computer becomes overrun with spy-ware, viruses, and general crap. A knowledgeable friend told me that if you put a plain-old Windows XP, unprotected, directly on the Internet, it will be compromised in hours. I thought he was exaggerating. After another visit to my parent’s computer, I know that he is not.

They have pop-up windows coming up when you don’t even have a web browser running (some spy-ware app). I ran a slew of anti-virus and anti-spyware apps and discovered hundreds of unwanted apps and files.

The trouble is, I would rather dig ditches in the hot sun than do tech support. I am terrible at it. My girlfriend tells me that it uncovers an ugly and angry side of me. I have no patience. I find doing tech support more stressful than almost anything else in life. It is a massive personality/character flaw of mine.

So, I’ve come to the conclusion that my parents do need someone to help them with their computer, and that I’m not sure I can do it. So what do I do? I thought about buying them an iBook (or eMac). That would solve a lot of the spyware/virus issues. However, I’m afraid it would uncover a whole slew of new issues. They would have to learn a new OS – not matter how good it is. I would be less able to help them, as I’m less familiar with OS X than I am with Windows.

I wish I could give them a simple locked-down system with a word-processor and web-browser, and not let them (or anyone) install anything else. I could probably do this with Linux, but that would be a whole new can of worms – and I’m not really qualified.

They are willing to pay someone else to help, but I have no-where to point them. Most tech support at local computer firms is too expensive and the people can be clueless.

Surely I’m not the only reluctant-relative-system-administrator (while talking with Stephen DesRoches about this, he enthusiastically agreed). What can we do to make this easier (for me and my parents)? Help!

My plan for now is to block of Saturday afternoon and re-format their machine, put it behind a hardware router (as a firewall), and hope it doesn’t happen again.

 

Hypocritical Greenery

by Steven Garrity

Two semi-random environmental notes from a complete evironmental hypocrite (me):

Thumbnail of waste movement mapFirst, Tessa Blake, who shared her fantastic soon-to-be-release film, The Pink House at the Zap Your PRAM conference mentioned the weekly Chicago radio show This American Life. When I saw the link to This American Life on Matt Rainnie’s new weblog, I knew it was worth checking out.

The first thing I saw on the This American Life website was this amazing map of the movement of solid waste in the United States. It speaks for itself.

While I admit to only having copped the context-free statistic and not having read the article yet, I thought it was worth sharing anyhow: Slashdot links to an article that suggests that:

“A staggering 98 tons of prehistoric, buried plant material is required to produce each gallon of gasoline we burn in our cars, SUVs, trucks and other vehicles.”

 

Branding Mozilla: Towards Mozilla 2.0

by Steven Garrity

Mozilla LizardI’ve been using and enjoying the products of the Mozilla project more and more lately. I’ve been hooked on Mozilla Firebird for a while, and my recent Mozilla Thunderbird theme was my first real contribution (if you could call it that) to the movement.

I’m very interested in the success of the project, and so I have written a short article outline some recommendations and ideas for branding Mozilla.

For those too lazy/busy to read the article (or those who understandably might value their time more than my words and ideas), here’s the 10-second version:

The Mozilla Project should adopt a simple, strong, consistent visual identity for the Mozilla products including consistent icons across applications that mesh with the host operating system.

Read the article in full and please feel free to comment in reply to this post.

Branding Mozilla: Towards Mozilla 2.0

Recommendations for the branding and visual identity of the Mozilla Foundation’s product and project line.
 

Six Degrees of Zap

by Steven Garrity

Zap Your PRAM ConferenceOur Zap Your PRAM conference is coming up next weekend and it’s really starting to come together. We’ve got a great lineup of participants, a great venue, and good eats.

I got an email this morning from Peter Rukavina, one of our Zap organizers, who is on the road to New York today. Apparently weblogger extraordinaire, Dave Winer is going to be on PEI for another conference (flash site) that week.

As it turns out Dave, who’s living in Boston, knows two of our participants, Buzz Bruggeman from Florida and Sebastien Paquet from Moncton, New Brunswick. All three will be on PEI next weekend.

It’s a small world.

 

Does 1.0 Matter Anymore?

by Steven Garrity

More and more of the software I’ve been using lately has been open source. With this shift comes a different approach to releasing updates and to version numbering. Following the “release early, release often” mantra canonized by Eric Raymond in The Cathedral and the Bazaar, many major open source projects like Mozilla release “nightly builds” throughout the development process.

The practice isn’t unique to open source. While they don’t release them, Microsoft does nightly builds of developing versions of Windows. The developers of the closed-source RSS reader I use on Windows, NewzCrawler, have be releasing frequent “beta builds” publicly.

I remember an old article in Windows Magazine (I think it was by Fred Langa) that worried that delivery of software over the internet rather than on physical media would lead to “dribble-ware” – software that was let out the door before it was ready, only to be patched after the fact (sound familiar?).

With all of these changes, I’m beginning to wonder if major version numbers are loosing their significance. Three applications that I am relying heavily on these days are all significantly pre-1.0 (Mozilla Firebird – 0.6, Mozilla Thunderbird – 0.2, and Gaim – 0.7). Having been released frequently for months (years) already, I doubt that these applications are any less complete or stable than most “1.0” software.

 

Weblogging the P.E.I. Election

by Steven Garrity

Friends of Acts of Volition and speakers at the Zap Your PRAM Conference Robert Patterson and Will Pate have been running the Election Watch weblog to blog the Prince Edward Island provincial election.

They’ve done a fine job. I was hoping to participate myself, but it didn’t pan out (too much else going on). CBC PEI has an in-depth RealVideo piece on Robert and Will’s Election (6min 44sec – RealVideo).

They even have Premier Pat Binns on camera explaining why he doesn’t post to his weblog himself. CBC did a good job of covering the convergence the weblog and politics. It’s not an easy thing for the traditional media to cover. Well done to Nancy Russell and all of CBC PEI.