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Writing out loud
So I'm writing a 6 kiloword article for a bigtime magazine on the subject "Why your operating system sucks (and what we're going to do about it)." That's probably not the ultimate title, but it'll do for now.
I'm trying to talk to all the usual suspects, of course. But I'd like to hear from the rest of ya'll too.
My day job is writing for Linux Journal, but I don't want this to have a pro-Linux slant. Same goes for open source and the free software. I'm working on no less than three platforms here (four if I can get Mac OSX going), and in their own special ways, they all suck.
I have lots of questions. Is it true that "there's no Moore's Law for software," as Ellen Ullman says? Or that "there's an inverse relationship between hackability and suckage," as Eric Raymond told me the other day?
Few books have made more sense to me on this subject than Neal Stephenson's In the Beginning was the Command Line. But his last words left me cold:
What would the engineer say, after you had explained your problem, and enumerated all of the dissatisfactions in your life? He would probably tell you that life is a very hard and complicated thing; that no interface can change that; that anyone who believes otherwise is a sucker; and that if you don't like having choices made for you, you should start making your own.
It's easy to operate a car or a house without being a mechanic or a carpenter, even though it helps to have those skills. Can't the same be true for PCs? Will it be? How?
Zope that lasts
I just noticed that the four sites that have been up longest at the largest hosting location (Exodus in Santa Clara, CA) are all Zope's. They're at 384+ days and counting.
And between the last paragraph and this, I noticed that #15 is none other than Cluetrain.com. Geez, we're that old?
For what it's worth, Zope runs on a Linux server and Cluetrain runs on a Solaris one. Almost interesting, huh?
To quote him is to love him
I love San Francisco mayor Willie Brown. The guy has brains to match his style, and he's got more of that than any other politician in the country. What I love most about him is that thing we call voice in The Cluetrain Manifesto. We go on about how companies generally don't have one, but the same is true of politicians. The one honest thing I heard from either of the "leading" presidential contenders was when George W. Bush, thinking the mike was off, called some reporter an asshole.
Willie has a voice, to say the least. Check out today's Matier & Ross column in the Chronicle. They quote the Mayor as saying the presidential race was "a choice between 'the insufferable and the incompetent,'" and that "'It's going to be like Italy — there's a government in Italy but no one who lives there cares who it is.'"
He said that two weeks ago. Now he's saying "It's over. Finished." By hizzoner's math, Gore can't erase Bush's current 930-vote lead. The rest of the votes will have to go to Gore by too wide a margin, and there aren't enough of them. It's like making up time on the exit ramp by going 800 miles an hour (my metaphor, not his; but I like it too much to leave out).
"He should wait out the count and then concede," the mayor says. And then be glad he did. "George Bush is going to be the next president, and he's going to regret he ever won." The bottom line: "In the last few days the awe has gone out of the office. People just don't care anymore who is president."
It's just a media spectacle. Like OJ and Elian. Let's thank the votors of San Francisco for giving the rest of us at least one politician who isn't afraid to make sense.
[By the way, the photo links back to its source, Esther.com, the Web home of Esther Hwang, the many-talented model who formely worked as the Mayor's scheduling secretary.]
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