Pandemonium Medicine Show

I've mentioned before that I've been working on replacing Windows XP on my Sun issued Toshiba Tecra laptop. I'll still need to keep XP around for customer support and testing but I really want to move to Solaris 10 x86. And it's not just about replacing Windows XP. I'm also seriously considering dumping Fedora Core from my desktop in favour of Solaris x86 AMD64 (mmmm 64-bit goodness). One of the roadblocks there has been access to some of the tools I commonly use like (unfortunatly) the GNU automake/autoconf/libtool/gcc toolchain, expat, CVS, Subversion, NEdit, mplayer, expat, libxml2, sqlite3, etc. [correct blog style would be of course to make links of each of the mentioned tools but I'm too damn lazy today].

Well today I discovered Blastwave.org and the reasons for sticking with Fedora are quickly evaporating. I've previously used SunFreeWare.com with good results but I've always been dissatisfied with the lack of proper packaging. Sorry, make install is not a viable installation method. I refuse to voluntarily use any system that does not include a reversible binary package installation system.

The only thing I'm currently wondering about is there seems to be some overlap between the Blastwave packages and some of the Solaris 10 supplemental opensource packages. I now have two expats and two bzip2 installations and possibly other dupes as well. Understandably some of these packages are probably required for supporting Solaris 8 and 9 but it would be nice to see the Blastwave packages depend upon the Solaris builtin packages where possible.

I've been working on replacing Windows XP on my Toshiba Tecra M2V laptop with Solaris 10. It's not been a speedy switch, no fault due to Solaris. I've been pretty preoccupied with JXTA-C work lately and I haven't ever used Solaris x86 before so it's taking me a while to get up to speed.

I've been trying to read as much as I can about Solaris 10, Solaris on x86 and especially the OpenSolaris plans. I was really enthusiastic to learn of several additional Solaris lists for me to skim mentioned in Eric Boutilier's blog : OpenSolaris buzz -- where to tune in. I followed the top two lists over the course of the weekend and learned quite a bit. Great recommendations Eric!

I was, however, quite disappointed by the amount of troll "advocacy". It seems too many people have been learning how to act on mailing lists by reading Slashdot. Slashdot remains one of the best Linux and OSS software news sites despite most discussions having huge preponderance of ignorant flames, trolls and misdirection. Every Slashdot thread seems to contain at least a few diamonds amongst all the slag and so I find myself I still read Slashdot at least once a day.

Most of the other mailing lists and sites I read are nothing like Slashdot. In particular I've always been impressed by the quality of posts and positive tone of the JXTA mailing lists. Four years (ok so it's four years in a week)--zero flame wars. The great discussions are the result of everyone being focused on their own productivity and not on pushing an agenda or ideology.

I believe there is a backlash coming against trollish advocacy. In a couple of incidents over the last year several self appointed "community leaders" have been rebuked for bad behaviour. This a good sign. I think there is a recognition coming that the people who's opinions matter are the people who contribute. So think carefully about what you say and consider carefully if it a contribution to the greater good or just another pointless distraction.

And who knows, maybe if good behaviour catches on within the open source software community it might even set a positive example for society in general and perhaps even be a positive influence on the very broken "culture wars" public discourse. One can always dream....

I found a reference to my blog the other day in Scott Hudson's blog talking about the conceptual difficulties with editing DocBook in StarOffice. It seems the only way that you can manage proper round-trip XML editting and have it conform to the XML stylesheet is to impose an unbelievably strict regime with the editor style sheets. It's also clear that current word processing tools were not designed with these requirements in mind. However, there are text editing tools which are very style sheet driven in their approach to text formatting--outliners.

I was an avid and enthusiastic user of More through most of the 1990s and became a wizard with creating styles and rule driven formatting. In part I think this is why I was initially attracted to building CSS styled HTML using DocBook XSL. I had pretty clear ideas in my mind of how the formatting should be specified and DocBook conformed perfectly to those expectations.

Sadly it seems that Outliners as a distinct application category have been entirely subsumed into word processors. For anyone who's used a real outliner the outlining features of modern word processors are pathetically weak. As happens too often though, one tool doing a half-assed job at a task is enough to kill the market for a tool that does the job properly. Perhaps editing of style sheet driven documents such as DocBook or even plain-old HTML could be a cause for reinvigoration of the outliner market.

I've got five half written blog entries in the works but this one had to jump the queue.

Let's do away with Overstrike (also known as overwrite) mode! How often have you accidentally hit the insert key when hitting backspace then found yourself overwriting other text? Does anyone still intentionally use overwrite/overstrike mode?

I really cannot understand why various editors still support this ananchronistic feature. When I was a Macintosh user (yes there are former Mac users) I was always frustrated by the one application I regularly used which allowed for overstrike mode since the rest of the Macintosh UI was overstrike free. On Linux it's a frustrating mix (seemingly everything about Linux/Unix is that way) with some applications having an insert/overstrike mode and others having no such mode.

So, application writers, why is this "feature" still in your applications?

I've been thinking a lot today about Canadian politics and Alberta politics in particular. I haven't lived in Alberta for nine years but to me it is still home. I still closely follow the politics, though being a Liberal my views haven't always been too relevant to what's going on in Alberta politics.

What's been on my mind has been the resignation of MP David Kilgour from the federal Liberal government. I've never really understood David Kilgour's politics. I've usually been baffled by them infact. I've always admired him for his willingness to take his lumps for sticking up for what he believes in though. I'm kind of hoping that BC's experiment in proportional representation takes hold and spreads so that eventually Canadian politics can support more independant minded folks like David Kilgour.

Listening to an interview with David Kilgour on he cited four reasons why he was leaving caucus. Same sex marriage, the sponsorship scandal, senate reform and the government's poor response to the genocide in Sudan's Darfur region. I didn't hear any mention of Kyoto, but he had to have mixed feelings about today's introduction of legislation.

Darfur-- 'nuff said. I totally agree that all western governments have criminally failed to respond to this horrendous situation. If you ever needed proof that selfishness (read "oil") drives foriegn policy this is it.

The whole sponsorship scandal issue bothers me. Inspite of the focus on Liberal cronies and supporters in this particular scandal I'm under no illusions that this is strictly a Liberal problem. I recall that before the last election when it seemed for a time that the Conservatives might take power one of the most depressing things for me was all of the former Mulroney-ite lobbiests, bagmen, influence peddlers and hangers on were rubbing their hands with glee and having their pockets enlarged. After 10+ years of deprivation they were really looking forward to suckling at the public teat once again.

Modern politics is entirely encumbered by these scumbags it seems. Not only in Ottawa, but in Washington, Edmonton, Moscow and elsewhere. The corruptness of the government can be measured in the degree to which they bother to hide themselves and their actions. There was an interesting interview this morning with Stevie Cameron (in)famous for her book "On the Take" about influence and lobbying in the Mulroney era. She very much agreed--don't expect it to get better if the Tories get elected. She seemed even more cyncial about the situation improving than I am.

One of the reasons I've supported Paul Martin in the past and couldn't support Stephen Harper was my feeling that Paul Martin actually wanted to do something about the problem rather than just changing the players. I sure hope he does get going on that soon.

I like to say that I've been married since 1990, but it took the government 5 years to figure it out. What I mean by this is that my wife and I weren't "legally" married until 1995. Neither of us saw the point to ask the government's permission to be married and we were already as committed to each other as we could possibly be, no piece of paper would improve that. Due to good recognition of common law marriage in Canada (enforced when it comes to taxes) there were no compelling legal reasons.

We were, however, "forced" to "marry" by the US government so that my wife could accompany me to the US when I came to work here. It's a great story, buy me a beer and I'll tell you all the hilarious details. To be entirely honest neither my wife nor I even remember the anniversary that's printed on our marriage license (sic). Some time in early August... I think.

This brings me back to another of David Kilgour's cited reasons for his resignation, same sex marriage. As someone with virtually no respect for the government version of marriage I have trouble believing that anything to do with marriage law would be a cause to leave government. Here's the deal: the government's proper interest in marriage should be no different than other legal contract. Nobody is asking for "same sex liens" or "same sex patents". Why is the government working only on marriage?

Something else to consider--did you remember to send the government a "thank you" card for granting you a marriage license? The morally and emotionally significant part of marriage, no matter how you define it, is not the part that involves the government. End of story. Your thoughts, efforts, love and if you have them, prayers, should be for the important part of your marriage, not focused on the "paperwork". Spend more time living your vision of the perfect marriage and less time trying to use the law to impose it on others.

Everyone should expect that they will not approve of all the relationships that their family members and friends will choose. They could be "bad" relationships because of the outsider's sexual preference, religion, politics, race or simply because the person is an ignorant jerk with poor table manners. In our pluralistic society such relationships, as long as they are legal, must be tolerated. You don't have to like it or celebrate it, but you do have to respect it. As I like to say, "Everyone has a right to be wrong."

Same sex relationships are going to exist whether there are laws allowing same sex marriage or not. By failing to allow for same sex marriages the government is failing in it's obligation to provide for a well ordered society. This would include provisions for wills, child custody, medical consent and even procedures for dissolution. Some have suggested that recognition of "civil unions" is the answer. I'd agree with this as long as the same legal structure applies to everyone.

For some it seems that it is only the use of the word "marriage" that's a problem. Besides thinking this a manufactured objection I believe that this is solved the same way that people originally distinguished a legal divorce from a religious divorce. For a long time people refered to "civil divorce" to distinguish it from the religiously sanctioned version (if there was one). Many faiths continue to take this view and that is entirely their choice. I really can't understand why it's such a strech to make a distiction between civil marriage and religious marriage and stop talking about it.

As an aside, if you want to an example of what happens when a government abbrogates responsibility in providing a legal structure for an ordered society look at the problems caused by lack of legal divorce in Ireland. In too many ways lack of divorce has hindered rather than encouraged "normal" family life, especially with regards to the raising of children. Rather than admitting that divorce may be undesirable but necessary many in Ireland continue to suffer due to the delusion of some that the problem will go away if they ignore it with sufficient fervour.

Lastly, David Kilgour mentioned dissatisfaction with the lack of progress on senate reform. I have to agree with him that the time is long past for some form of action on senate reform. The Alberta system seems as good as any. I'd prefer if the formal political parties never became part of the senate election process. I'd also like to seem some innovation in how senators are nominated. I believe Canada will benefit from a senate that is constituted differently than the House of Commons. We don't need a second "senior" House of Commons. I've heard some interesting ideas such as the election being only open to retired premiers assuming one or more of them wants the job. Or the election is only open to those who have not served in federal or provincial government or not served for more than 5 years. I would really like to see the process encourage political outsiders, business people, civic politicians (Al Duerr for Senate!) and academics to become involved. I don't see any reason to change the term of senators or at least let the senate regulate itself in that regard. The greater the difference between the senate and the House of Commons I believe the more effective it will be.

I've never been too concerned about the "equal" provision of the Triple-E Senate. In part it's because I believe that most Canadian politicians, with the possible exception of the Bloc, are not regionalists. They are federalists or nationalists. I would very much like to see the Senate be the most Federalist body. Perhaps senators, once elected, should all be senators "at-large" and lose any association with district or region in their ability to act on behalf of Canadians.

Ok, that's about five blogs and two train rides worth of writing. Time to stop.