Waste of Papers

Even though we have lived in digital world, some people still prefer to use the old way, papers. We just can't live without papers. It's very strange actually, because we could be more effective by using paperless mechanisms, but in the end, papers still dominate the bureaucracy and administrative systems.

I wasted lots of papers during my thesis because everytime i add a revision on my thesis, i would have to re-print those changed page and all the sub sequences, because the numbering will be effected also. This is only at the thesis report, not including the administrative papers i should print. It's just too much....

Features VS Stable

Sam Varghese wrote an interesting article about How often do we need GNU/Linux releases?. Basically, it describes the life cycle of an operating system and it's release cycle.

Some people said it's better to use long cycle and put everything interested on that build and release it as a big jump. This what happened in most Windows products. Every new Windows product always put huge pile of new features and sometimes it's too bloated and not everybody can afford to use that new product (i think i don't have to mention the product). This model is good when you (as the customer) are using very old version, since you can jump to that version and you will get a whole new system with new features. It's also has negative impact, such that you must learn to get used to it (mostly when the UI is totally revamped like what happened in MSO 2007).

While in the other hand, most Linux distribution tends to have iteration and shorter cycle, let's say every 6 months (this what happened in two big Linux distribution, such as Ubuntu and Fedora). People can have better estimates, since they can expect a new version every six months (even though it slipped, most of the time it's just one or two weeks). Unfortunately, this approach may suitable for those who have good Internet access, since downloading them is not a big problem. People who had slower bandwidth must wait until they can get from their friends or as a bonus on a Linux magazine. While they are trying to install this version, new version is already scheduled and things will change again. It's like your life is just meant to upgrade your OS every day .

In most cases, you will see that in six months, lots of things have changed in the core of the OS. Take an example of Ubuntu. They are trying their best to integrate the latest technology on their products every six months (in the past, it was Mandriva and SuSE who did this). Sometimes, they don't have enough time to test all of those new fancy features and just pushed it out to meet the schedule. In the end, it may crippled the OS which supposed to be stable to be used for daily activities and production. In simple words, they are focusing on the technology. This sounds good at the beginning, but when the deadline draws near, they might get rushed and forget about the stability.

Lucky me that Slackware do not use this tradition. You will never know when will PV released next version of Slackware until he announced officially (even though you might be able to guess from the -Current changelog). For him, stability is the main focus of the Slackware development, not the bleeding edge technology that might caused lots of headache due to heavy load of maintenance and security problems.

In short, Slackware's motto about release cycle: It will be released when it's ready. This is a good example. Why? because the product should be stable enough until the next cycle of development. You can't ask your users to update everyday, can you? They got work to do. It's the maintainer's job to make sure that the OS is stable enough for daily usage. There are disadvantages of this approach (of course, nothing is perfect). You might not see the latest technology on Slackware, but i guess a working and stable system is better than a system with bleeding edge technology but not stable enough.

Well, it's my personal opinion (because i used Slackware), so it's normal if you disagrees with me for this matter (mostly if you used other OS). There's alway a trade-offs between features and stability. You want more features? Expect less stability and vice versa.

What's The Reason You Use Linux?

Sometimes, i (or perhaps most of us, Linux users) have been asked "What's the reason you use Linux?" The answers may vary, depends on who are asked. Some people might say it's free. Others might say, it's virus proof. Lots of answers can come up from just this single questions. A lot of conversations might arise and probably added with some flame wars

Vlad Dolezal wrote on his blog about the real reason why we use Linux. He mentioned one thing: because it's fun. What's so fun about Linux, you might ask. So here are the three things that makes Linux so fun:

• Linux gives you complete control
• Linux isn't widely used
• Linux is free (as-in-speech)

I agree with his opinion, mostly the first one. I can have total control of my system and i can do lots of things with it. I can compile my own kernel, modify the desktop, changing the icons, and probably breaking it (and recover it again), and many more. This is something that i may not get while in Windows (well, some of those actions can be done, but sometimes, you will need third party application which are commercial).

Not Cheap Anymore

I used Fren from Mobile-8 to communicate with my girlfriend in Jogja. She also used Fren so we can communicate with each other with cheap prize. But suddenly after the price was raised, everything became way too expensive. I usually buy 1 voucher for 1 month, but this month i already bought two voucher even though i used the same frequency to call my girlfriend (furthermore, sometimes she is the one who called me).

My colleagues and friends also feels the same thing, because they said that their credit (for pre-paid type) are dropping so fast and when they realized it, it's already almost empty.

Other problems that i usually experienced when using Fren is the limitation of the networks. When you try to make a phone call around 8 - 10 PM, you will often receive a busy line message from the operator thus you will have to redial again and again before your call can be received by the recipient. Also sometimes i had a dropped call in the middle of the conversation, even though the signal is full.

Fren oh Fren....

Think Before You Act

Sometimes, we do something without thinking about it deeply at the beginning. At the end, we don't get the result we expected and sometime there's nothing we can do to fix it, because we can't rollback the time (not like Transaction in Database which can be rolled back). Therefore, it's a wise thing if we think about our next action before doing something, mostly for important task.

Perhaps one of the most relevant example related to this issue is the SMS message that was sent by someone with initial IS. He sent a SMS message to six numbers and said like this (taken from DetikInet) :

"Sekarang rakyat sudah mulai menjarah akibat penanganan banjir yang tidak baik. Untuk itu kami mengimbau kepada seluruh rakyat yang terkena bencana banjir untuk segera menjarah apotik-apotik, toko-toko makanan seperti Carrefour, Hero, Indomaret, dll."

Translations (sorry for my bad English):

"Now people have started to rob due to bad flood handling. Therefore, we advice to all people who suffered from the flood to start robbing drug store, groceries such as Carrefour, Hero, Indomaret, etc."

When he was arrested, he said that his motif was to make other people scared and start carrying to other people and help them, but i don't think this is relevant with his message. He suggest other people to do bad things (stealing).

If he really tried to help other people, why would he had to do that? Is that a good way to help other people?

Not Ready To Use Open Source?

I was planning to go home when i read this a news from DetikInet saying that the Indonesian government will not be running if they migrate to Open Source right now and decided to write something about it first. It was said by Minister of Communication and Information Technology, Mr. Sofyan Djalil. He noted that there were three reason why :
1. The government's computer needs to be upgraded.
2. Incapable of human resources
3. Driver support for printer

I was laughing when i read this ridiculous reason, because actually we are ready to do that. It's not about technical issues, but about the mentality of the human resources itself. Since the government has also IGOS project and Minister of Research and Technology has said that IGOS is ready to be used, why don't we start using it? It has been developed very well and i don't think all GNU/Linux distribution/application requires high specification for computers (well, some does, but only a few of it) and upgrades can be done partially with the workstation that uses the most critical application comes first. Does an office workstation needs to be upgraded to the state-of-the-art specification just to use GNU/Linux? I don't think so. If they want to use Windows Vista, then it may be correct. Vista does requires high resources. In GNU/Linux, we have plenty of choices about Window Manager. If you don't have too high specification, don't use KDE/GNOME. Use IceWM, Blackbox, FluxBox, XFCE, etc. The same case applies to applications.

Talking about human resources, i think it's about habits. They gets strange feeling when they use Open Source because they never tried that before. When they have started to get a grip on it, everything will come back to normal as before. Let's take an example of the most common application being used in the governments which is office application suite. OpenOffice.org has been proven stable and it's being recommended by many big vendors as it supports for OpenDocument Format (ODF), which has been approved as ISO and IEC International Standard. Munich and Malaysian government has dare to migrate their documents to ODF format, why can't we? How long do we have to wait for standardized national format?

About lack of printer driver in OpenSource, i don't know too much about it, since i never tried to probe printers in my Slackware system, but as far as i know, CUPS project has maintain a lot of drivers for various printers. Buying TurboPrint license is cheaper than having to pay for Windows' license.

If we never start doing things, when do we learn something new? Remember, experience is the best teacher :D

I'm sure there will be a lot of post about this also in the next few days.
Let's just wait and see...

Update (15 January 2007 10:20 AM): Tim Anderson, Information Services Director at the NSW Department of Education and Training (DET) highlighted user retraining as a significant cost. Jonathan Oxer, president of Linux Australia, rather ask to move to Linux platform instead of having re-training for new version of Windows. Cited from ZDNet:

"One of the big costs the DET always faces when changing platform is retraining -- because we have 1.2 million users. Traditionally we try to make the new platform look like the old platform as much as possible.

"Clearly some of the changes to the user interface may well be things that users find attractive. In that case we will have to include the cost of implementation and training as part of the [Vista] rollout".

So, what will happen next when Windows Vista and Microsoft Office 2007 comes out? The prices that we should spend on re-training is very very expensive, because it came out with new features, new interfaces, and new complexity. And when people are being accustomed with that, a new big bang version has been released and another re-training should be conducted. Never ending stories...