The FuzzyBlog!
Marketing 101. Consulting 101. PHP Consulting. Random geeky stuff. I Blog Therefore I Am.

Thursday, August 08, 2002

Heh.  Turning Someone onto Linux Is Just Plain Fun! I had two funny experiences recently about turning someone onto Linux.  No I won't preach (much) about the one true way.  Linux is just a tool, like any other.  Still, when you are working with someone who never, ever experienced command line computing, it can be very, very eye opening for them.  Now Gretchen is only a couple of years younger than I am but her computing experience apparently really hit in the Post DOS world so she's literally never seen this stuff before.  Here's the situation and two scenarios. Experience the First I'm working with my consulting partner, Gretchen, who's a designer, DreamWeaver / PhotoShopper, MA and MBA (don't hold that against her; she actually learned a lot in school and she didn't go to an ivy league school which is a frothy goodness in my mind; ivy league MBAs were partially / mostly responsible for the dot com flamout) . We're at her home office and on a deadline.  We've got a ton of individual HTML pages to correct and update.  Little stuff.  Annoying stuff. I take over the PC I ssh into our rackspace server; no need to FTP down or up.  We're going to do it live. I do the vi dance I make probably 200+ discrete edits on different html pages in less than 1/2 hour The combination of / i :w / vi commands and such is fairly awesome (if I do pat myself on the back) Gretchen is guiding me thru the edits (she handled the client interaction on this one), I turn around and look at her and I detect a bit of a glazed eye from the speed at which I was going.  Jaw dropping at times and such. Experience the Second 2 Weeks Hence I don't take over the PC I begin to teach Gretchen the ssh / vi tango (or is it a foxtrot / waltz?) Light quickly begins to dawn (she's damn sharp) When I teach her about right click paste, she likes it.  Just 1 button to paste = Cool. Point out syntax highlighting and :u for undo. Point out the mock dialog box system like :e . (which gives you all files in the current directory to choose which ones to edit) Appreciation shines in her eyes 3 days later she's still remembering the basics on her own when she dances the dance again.  Makes me beam with pride. I'm not trying to preach here.  It's just that command line computing is so fundamentally different from GUI computing as to seem at times like a whole different world.  And, when you first encounter a whole different world, it's always interesting.  I have the same type of experience whenever I struggle with the arcane, confusing monster known as Photoshop (I call it "the beast that ate all my RAM").  Will Gretchen ever go full *nix?  Of course not.  For what she does, GUIs work nicely.  But having the option when you need to do stuff quickly is pretty cool.  What she's learning, however, is that there is a whole different computing ecosystem out there.  And, while it's cryptic and arcane as all get out, it's also ripping fast when compared to GUI stuff.  It's also not all that hard -- at least at the basics. VI.  It's like crack.  A little taste and then you're jonesing for more. 9:36:29 PM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This

DANISH COURT RULING STOPS DEEP LINKING Ack!  What the heck do Danish Bloggers do (from the Seybold Reports email newsletter, www.seyboldseminars.com) In an unusual decision that could have a impact on how European publishers and Web users view and use the Internet, a lower court in Copenhagen, Denmark ruled in July that hyperlinking to Web pages beneath a publication's  front page (a.k.a., deep linking) without permission is a  violation of copyright laws. The ruling is based on a lawsuit filed in late June by the  Danish Newspaper Publishers' Association (DNPA), which sought to enjoin online news aggregator Newsbooster  (www.newsbooster.com) from linking to stories located underneath newspapers' respective front pages. The DNPA  said Newsbooster linked to approximately 20 of its members' publications. Newsbooster offers a subscription-based  service that provides customers with personalized news feeds from more than 3,000 online sources. Direct links to  the stories are sent to customers by email. By linking to the stories directly, the DNPA argued, ad revenue was lost (hits were lost on the ad-heavy front pages) and services are able to generate revenue off the work of others. The Danish court agreed, and Newsbooster was prohibited from linking to any of the DNPA's member  sites. Newsbooster has said it will appeal. The ruling only affects Newsbooster and the papers in question; whether the ruling could have a more widespread effect is unclear. In the United States, the Dallas Morning News and National Public Radio have undertaken and subsequently dropped efforts to stop deep linking to their sites. We hope that legal action against deep linking does not become a bonding force among newspapers and media outlets internationally. Attempts to stop it are symptomatic of fear of a new age of information exchange brought about by the Internet. Media outlets that think they can control people's path to information on the Web in the hopes of leading them into the hands of advertisers are mistaken. Publishers that don't want anyone linking directly to pages have every right to put the content behind a firewall, to limit access through authentication or other technical innovation, or to find another way to disseminate it. 7:03:39 AM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This