philosophical geekess

If you were to walk up to someone on the street and ask them to name one problem — any problem –  that they are aware of, it is unlikely that they would be able to stop at one.

Chances are pretty high that many of the problems they know of, you will never have heard of or come across personally.

Sadly, lack of awareness is the single largest cause of problems not being fixed.

Think of it as being like the person who always parks across your driveway. If you park down the street and wait for them to move – rather than honking the horn – they’ll never know they’re obstructing someone.

How do we raise awareness of problems that we have? Well, in the software world, we have what are known as bugs.

People report problems they have discovered by raising bugs. This horn-honking makes the problems more visible, and people who can contribute to making a difference act on these bugs.

Both reporting the bugs, and the followup by others are actions which change the world for the better and should be celebrated.

Ubuntu does this really well with it’s initiatives like Bug Jams, 5-A-Day and Hug Days.

Sadly, reporting ‘bugs’ with non-software things (like Community) is not quite so straightforward.

As there is no bug tracker for problems we see in our community, to report these “Community Bugs” we sometimes have to take action with other tools. Some of us use blogs to raise awareness of these issues. Sadly, sometimes these reports get confused for the problem itself, because they make the problem more visible.

This is a very wrong way to approach the problems being raised, and it saddens me. A lot.

Making a problem visible does not (and should not) mean it is a problem unique to us. It should never be used as a measurement of something we are doing worse than others, just because we are choosing to act while they do not. On the contrary. It means that we are better at dealing with those problems.

Blogging about problems we see in our community should be seen as a good thing, not a bad thing. Why? Because this blogging is action. The alternative is no action, and that is much worse.

Of course, having to rely on blogs to do the job of an issue tracker is not ideal. What I’d really love to see is a real way to report Community Bugs, where their visibility is something that equates a positive action.

Because action is change.

About a year ago, I picked up an eeepc701 with xandros (wiped of course, for ubuntu) for around AU$275 and it’s done me well. I’m a bit over the cramped keyboard, mere 4gb space and the current graphics performance under 9.04. Oh, and the heat. Whoever thought putting a celeron in a teensy case with only an itty bitty fan must have been insane.

I had been planning on replacing the 701 eventually, and was kinda holding out for something ARM based. ARM + SSD = heatless, fanless, instant-on shiny. I’d given up on this though, as the preview models were floating around with either no vga-out or only 4gb space.

The battery is currently out of the machine here, hence that gap

However, I was in BigW yesterday and spotted one of these in the display cabinet, marked down to AU$400 from $699 and labelled ‘as is’. I enquired what the specs were and was told ‘not sure, we dont have the books, that’s why it’s marked down’. Fair enough, I thought and after googling on my phone for a bit decided it was a worthwhile score. There was this one in the display cabinet, but also one out the back already boxed up, and the plastic stuff that covers the useful parts on it was pink. I chose the boxed up one as I figured it would have been checked when boxing.

Happily, I depart the store with the new shiny. When I get home I unpack it, put the battery in and it turns on, booting into the xp setup. I ponder for a while over whether to accept it, and do so anyway as the markdown would make it hard to argue for a refund, and besides, it has full versions of AoE3 and Zoo Tycoon preinstalled.

So I go through all that and boot into XP and notice the battery is low, which isn’t surprising. I look around for the ac adaptor…

There wasn’t one.

I pouted and put the new shiny aside until I could ring the store today as it was already past closing time.

I rang them this afternoon and explained the situation. The attendant who answered ran off and spoke to the manager, who said I could return it or get an extra $50 off because i’d been misinformed. Hmm, now let me think about this.

I google around and find a replacement ac adapter for $50. Awesome. Now, about that SSD. Staticice.com.au uncovered some nice bargains on 32gb sata ssd, and picked up a clearance model for ~$130. Crazy awesome.

$350 (netbook after additional markdown) + $50 (adapter) + $130 (32gb ssd) + $20 (for shipping) = AU$550.

So, what do I get for that? 10″ netbook, c7-m, 1gb ram, 32gb ssd and a 6 cell battery (which will last extra long with the ssd power saving).

I’m not sure that can even be matched retail.

DoctorMo has blogged about “The Mother Test”.

It is a rather poorly named test if you ask me, especially since I would have to do this on my Father  instead.

You see, my mother passed “The Mother Test” by installing Linux before Ubuntu even existed, and introducing me to it.

Yes, that’s right. Mum introduced me to Linux.

Mum is works on a casual/temporary basis, but in most places she works, she becomes known as a go-to person for computer advice. She first installed Linux back when it wasn’t even able to match Win95 on the desktop. This was part of her studies for the technical support course she was doing for career expansion (the syllabus module was “install an operating system”, but someone forgot to specify which) and her teacher was a very open-minded ex-sysadmin.

Now days, Mum runs Ubuntu on her primary computer. She even reports the occasional bug.

Dad on the other hand, demands assistance if the icons mum has to set up for him on his Windows desktop change order, or if new ones appear

So, can we please find a better name for this test.

So, the intel graphics drivers in 9.04 are making quite a few people sad.

Including me.

I’m keeping an eye on a few ppas, including the one the developers seem to be recommending: https://edge.launchpad.net/~ubuntu-x-swat/+archive/

It’s not perfect, but it is at least managed by ubuntu devs. It is also made for ubuntu.

In the mean time can people please stop advising end users to install random debian packages and/or repositories. Aside from the risks you are introducing to their systems, you’re teaching them really dirty, bad habits.

You know who you are, and you know, most of you really do know better. If you insist on continuing down this line, can you at least please start giving out your phone number when you give out dangerous advice. That way the poor suckers can call you when the crying starts.

Seriously, not even wobbly windows are not worth the pain you are lining up for later on.