Fitting the battle of life

This is late coming to me as news, but Charles Arthur of the Guardian posted this tweet a few days ago:

The Guardian is said to have the largest installation of Macs in Europe, although Windows computers still use MS Office, and Google Apps for your Enterprise is also used across the board, according to a discussion on the BBC Backstage mailing list.

Anyway, I couldn’t find much more reference to this in a quick Google search and this week’s Guardian Tech hasn’t been released yet, so I don’t know if they’ll be making reference to it there. Still, 1,000+ installs of OpenOffice must not only save the GMG a tidy sum in these difficult economic terms, but also shows just how far open-source technology has come, for such a large organisation to drop a well-supported MS product in favour of it. This, of course, follows large installs of Ubuntu in the French public sector and elsewhere – I sense, perhaps, a tide slowly turning.

[Update: I've found a couple more links on this, including one from March 2009 in the paper itself stating that "This paper is a recent convert to OpenOffice", although another that confirms the move to OpenOffice but quotes "Andy Beale, technology director of enterprise operations at GNM" as saying that "We’re promoting [Google Docs] as the primary productivity application“, which takes away some of the importance of the OpenOffice move.]

The Guardian is reporting that talks between Facebook and Twitter regarding a sale of the latter to the former have died out. Well, thank twit.

I think I completely agree with Jemima Kiss when she says in this article that

though it would undoubtedly take Twitter to a more mainstream audience (Twitter had 6 million users as of last month – Facebook has more than 100m) it would also dilute some of the early adopter power juice of Twitter among a community that is still experimenting with how to use it, rather than pigeon holing it as a lightweight friend updating service

I am a fan of multiple services that do single jobs very well. Facebook isn’t nearly as good as Flickr at photos. Facebook isn’t nearly as good as YouTube at video. Facebook statuses are just not as good as tweets – commenting on other people’s status just isn’t the same as an @reply.

Now, companies working together to integrate services – or preferably, letting people do this by opening up APIs – is something I like to see. Being able to show off your flickr photos or latest tweets on your blog or whathaveyou is a good idea. But yanking Twitter out of its (valuable) niche and forcing it into Facebook wouldn’t have been a good one.

Allow my tweets to appear as statuses, by all means (but looking at my profile recently, I’ve decided I might stop that due to sheer volume), but do it by allowing applications to use each service’s APIs. Too many technologies/webapps owned by one webapp to rule them all just doesn’t appeal to me.

Well, having posted a message for Obama in the flickr pool as I blogged the other day, I was rather excited to see the following message pop up in my inbox yesterday:

As you know Guardian News & Media (GNM) recently set up a group on Flickr called “A Message for Obama” to capture the many and diverse personal reactions to the election of President Obama. Thank you for taking part! We have been inspired and excited by both the quantity and quality of contributions so far – it’s an amazing collaborative effort.

To further commemorate this historic occasion, Guardian Books is publishing a book called “A message for Obama”, featuring some of the images uploaded to this Flickr group. The book will be 140 pages long, with a recommended retail price of up to GBP 9.99, and will be available in December 08.

This is a not-for-profit venture, as GNM will be donating all proceeds from this edition to the Guardian Katine project, details of which can be found at: www.guardian.co.uk/katine

We would very much like to include your photograph in this project.

www.flickr.com/photos/joshblacker/3008960552/

Of course, with 140 pages to fill, I’m not the only one. There’s a thread in the flickr group about it, but apart from that, no mention I can find on the web. Bobbie Johnson (a tech writer) seems to be the only staff member to have acknowledged publicly that this project is going on. The Guardian’s Deadline USA blog has the original announcement, but nothing of the new book project. [Edit: also found this blog post about it from another flickr member.]

You’d have thought that putting together a £9.99 book and hoping to make profits (for charity, basically) would require more of a marketing push. Are there really that many people who’ll buy it, when all the photos are online? Depending on the license applied, you could download them all and print your own book of your own favourites anyway – for as cheap as the printing costs you. Of course, that wouldn’t net the very worthy Katine project any extra funds.

Hmm. (This is me not knowing what to think.)

[Update: The book is now out and I have my copy!]

Ubuntu brainstorm mentioned (in passing, I must admit) in the Guardian Technology section, in the first paragraph of this article, which describes Starbucks’ new website along the same lines as Brainstorm and Dell’s IdeaStorm.

It always makes me smile when Ubuntu gets mentioned in the news, even if it’s a tiny little aside as in this case. It just helps get the name out, I suppose.

Yes, terrorists are so rife within society these days – much more prevalent, much more organised, much better funded and equipped than the IRA ever was, of course -  that we need a draft of new legislation to protect us poor, vulnerable and innocent citizens from them, by which we mean giving up all our privacy and subjecting our private data to the security services so they can analyse our movements around London using Oyster cards to determine that we are indeed poor, vulnerable and innocent, not nasty horrible terrorists.

As for ‘cyber war’, surely they could come up with a better moniker than that? I’ve not heard the term cyberspace since reading Neuromancer, I swear.

Source: MI5 seeks powers to trawl records in new terror hunt

I just finished reading this story from the Guardian (sorry, it’s just my paper of choice) that has made me slightly angry. They concern remarks made in a leaked e-mail from a Tory mayor:

I am aware Islamic organisations are keen to promote a view that they are peaceful, forward-thinking individuals who wish to integrate into the British way of life.
The policy of clothing the feminine population of Dewsbury in black sack-like clothing from head to toe, the occasional trip out to cause mayhem with explosives and the proposal that all those of homosexual persuasion should be killed by shooting or other means is adequate and practical testimony to the level of progress being made in this direction.

These inflammatory remarks do nothing to help solve some of the problems we have in this country. As much as there is a very small (very small, if I might repeat myself) minority of people in this country who are willing to engage in acts of terrorism, I personally feel that they are not as dangerous as the kind of people who will equate that tiny minority with an entire religious or ethnic group to which they (claim to) belong.

Furthermore, where is the equal outrage from people like this man against all homophobia, for instance? I can’t for a minute believe he truly would like to eradicate homophobia; it is being used as a poor excuse (because again, that is the view of a minority) to make disparaging and damaging remarks against a particular religious group.

I also love how ‘the British way of life’ is trotted out as something that must be defended against all change forever, as if this nation should be stuck in a timewarp, repelling all immigrants and outsiders. There is no ‘British way of life; just look at London. The people and behaviour you might associate with (for instance) white English people living in Camden and Islington is very different, and these are two boroughs right next to each other. Extend the idea to all non-white British inhabitants of these two places and already the ‘British way of life’ is a hodgepodge, smorgasbord, veritable rainbow of customs and cultures. The ‘British way of life’, to me, is about accepting and integrating different cultures by preserving them, not by destroying them and imposing homogeneity.

Mayor Robert Bennett said:

I apologise for any remarks I have made which may have caused offence. I sincerely hope my comments will not undermine the important job of work that has to be done in building greater community cohesion throughout West Yorkshire.

He has rejected calls for him to resign; he is evidently wrong to have done so. I don’t think he can retain any credulity after such remarks, especially as a servant of the public. When he attacks part of that public, even if he later retracts those comments, the damage has been done.

I read, as those who know me will no doubt know, the Guardian as my paper (well, actually, being a broke student, website) of choice, and especially make sure to catch the Technology supplement on a Thursday, simply because techy stuff is a minor passion of mine. I’ve noticed over the past year or so (perhaps since I started actively looking) more and more mentions of Linux, and particularly Ubuntu. So it came as no great surprise to find this post by Kevin Anderson today.

He has been using Ubuntu for six months, and comes to the conclusion that it is “ready for advanced computer users, but not most mainstream users”, for example his parents. However, not only has he not asked his parents to try it, but the issues he brings up as ‘cons’ include mainly driver issues. One comment from an American describes a large group of Ubuntu users whose average age is 74 all humming along quite nicely, and (from my own experience) my mother is quite happy using Ubuntu – and I certainly wouldn’t call her an advanced computer user. After several comments, (including my own!), the author conceded: “I guess, that’s not much different now with a Windows machine”. Victory is ours!

I do admit that the issues he had with his own machine are genuine issues with certain video/audio drivers, but with the likes of Dell offering pre-installed issues in the mainstream market, the ‘average’ computer user simply isn’t going to run into the same difficulties. And, of course, it’s well known that Windows has driver issues, worse than GNU/Linux does. But I won’t turn this into a MS-bashing post.

The simple fact is, while all publicity is good publicity, articles such as this slightly skew the perspective an ‘average’ user has of Ubuntu. It would have been a very different article had the author taken a new Ubuntu Dell for a ride, instead of installing it on his own, older system. Articles like this do highlight the benefits of Ubuntu (and there is indeed a list of praise-worthy points), but at the same time aren’t entirely constructive. While the author added an update to the main article with a link to various features coming in Hardy, he didn’t update it to clarify his remarks about the ‘your parents’ test, which many people would miss in the comments.

Rant over.