Colin Charles Agenda

Hactivist Richard Stallman takes on proprietary software, SAAS and open source – Tech News and Analysis: “‘Our ideals become forgotten,’ he said of open source eclipsing free software, and encouraged the audience to keep talking about free software.”

Richard Stallman is spot on. Read the whole article. I hope video makes its way online, because RMS is right. 

It further augurs well that I spoke with MÃ¥rten Mickos on Twitter today (he’s a former CEO of mine and a brilliant mind) and we got chatting on control. He says, “Every time you choose convenience, you lose a little control.” An interesting conversation followed naturally.

Every time you choose convenience, you lose a little control.

— MÃ¥rten Mickos (@martenmickos) August 6, 2013

Leaves me a lot to think about as I have over time chosen convenience over control and clearly it has come by because I need to refresh on my ideals.

For the last month, I’ve had a 30-day challenge, inspired by Sara. She challenged me to going to the gym three times a week and spending one and a half hours each time. This is 4.5 hours of working out per week.

I just unlocked this achievement yesterday. On average, I spend about an hour on the elliptical, I do abdominal crunches and then I go for a swim (something I always used to do). When travelling I don’t get what my home gym has, so I have also done the treadmill, cycling, chest presses, seated rows and some exercises for my back (this was especially required when I first started on this challenge). Most times at the home gym, I rock up to the sauna afterward as well.

Upon first starting I was pretty exhausted, but after about the first week it got easier and now it just seems like second nature. To pass time I listen to audiobooks so I’m learning as I go along.

I completed the challenge in three cities across three continents: Kuala Lumpur, São Paulo, and Portland, Oregon. A big issue for me was the time spent on planes. Have I lost weight? No. Have I lost fat? Yes. Am I going to continue? Absolutely. Shorter than 1.5 hours each time, but I’m definitely going to continue.

In fact, I should head there now!

(The picture in this post is the view from my favourite gym, the Park Club at Park Hyatt Seoul. I can’t wait to visit it soon.)

About five years ago, I worked on kiosk software. This seemed like the logical thing to do after working on Linux LiveCD’s. It was meant to be an information kiosk for tourists to use, and just short of building & deploying the thing in a production environment, the bid was lost (worst off kiosk, cost 4x more, but given to a bumi husband & wife team – the remnants of the produce can still be seen today).

A lot has changed in 5 years. Back then this was a Linux terminal with Firefox running the interface. It was locked down. This was long before I discovered WebConverger for kiosk software.

Today, iPad’s suffice as kiosks. Kids have iPad’s to appease them from the time they are young. The iPad replaced the TV. Babies get used to touch before they say their first words.

So an iPad interface to show off your hotel like at the Aloft Brussels Schumann? This is just brilliant. For the people that go to stay at Aloft’s (say the W isn’t available in that location), they are likely already used to using i-devices.

Interface matters and iOS is the benchmark. I’m not sure X Windows and a browser will suffice even though they are almost the same thing. I’m not even sure if future kiosks will have a physical keyboard (we planned on it, with a trackball). Now you touch, type using a virtual keyboard and don’t need a pointing device any longer except your finger.

I went to the European Parliament for a tour and they had these iPod Touch devices with NOUSGuide on them. NOUSGuide have some opensource software available if that matters. I really enjoyed touring and understanding more about the Parliament using the iPod Touch. Again, its the touch and the familiarity with iOS that matters. Back in the day you got audio guides that worked when you scanned a code, or entered a number – horrible interfaces but they worked. These i-devices however show you more, and you can interact with the media – its no longer just audio, but photos and videos.

Hotels offer business centres and while they are full-fledged PCs they usually run in kiosk mode. For a while, the InterContinental in Seoul offered loaner Samsung tablets (for obvious reasons). The Park Hyatt just across the road offers loaner iPad’s. Again, touch is taking over from being in a stodgy business centre.

Interesting trend to see Apple devices take over in all these markets. There is also a changing face in the way we interact with kiosk-like computing devices. The future is clearly looking very i-device based.

A while back I stated that paywalls aren’t bad. But they are downright annoying when it comes to sharing articles. It breaks the whole flow of the sharing economy – I like to tweet links to things that I find of interest, and when the other party can’t view it, it surely gets quite annoying.

Paywalls also start imposing IP inspection. Malaysiakini has done this and you are forced to re-login regularly. Its very annoying as it breaks the flow again and you’re now logging in, then being redirected. So it works like this: click on article, see logged out screen, click on login, then be re-directed to the article. By this time I’ve lost interest in reading.

Newspapers are read by a whole household. I know of offices reading a single newspaper. Heck, in the clubs that I frequent, probably a hundred people read the same newspaper in the sauna. Paywalls should ensure that the household is taken care of. 

What about the modern concept of a household? Father and mother living in the Philippines, daughter working in Malaysia and son working in Dubai? Isn’t this still a household? Paywalls like those for the FT/NYTimes seem to understand this (or are not taking action at the moment), but the Malaysiakini paywall slaps you with the crappy user interface above.

I want online media to succeed but broken paywalls aren’t going to cut it.

On my to-subscribe list is BizKini, which brings a Malaysiakini subscription to a ringgit a day. This is basically the same price you’ll pay for a newspaper in print! Is their reporting that much better that its worth all the pain of the above? I’m not so sure.

So besides a broken login UI, how does one improve sharing?

In the opensource world, we go and give talks for free. This is generally the consensus with regards to the tech world as well. You don’t pay for speakers. Some speakers have fees and you somehow negotiate with them to provide you a talk for free. Or you just don’t have them speak at your event (I know this from organising large events too).

But paying for speakers must be common. There are so many speaker bureaus out there.

Look at Bill Clinton and Tony Blair. Now it seems that Timothy Geithner earned USD$400,000 for 3 speeches (seems his average is $100,000 per speech). Hillary Clinton charges USD$200,000 for a speech on average.

Clearly, I must be in the wrong industry.

This is a followup to my early post a month ago titled: MariaDB replaces MySQL in RHEL 7 (lots of stuff in the comments). It’s clear that MariaDB’s role is in Software Collections, which is new in RHEL.

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols writes Red Hat will switch from Oracle MySQL to MariaDB, reports.

Sean Michael Kerner has a video (and writeup) with Denise Dumas, RHEL team leader, who talks about Software Collections, MariaDB, and how we’re all friendly (Red Hat + SkySQL + MariaDB). There will be 3 years of support for Software Collections. Indemnification applies as always, its just support cycle per collection is reduced. New MySQL ships in Software Collections too. Its available for 6.4/6.5 (probably as a GA as its beta now), and will be in RHEL7 too.

Also, if you’re using OpenShift, there is now a new cartridge: the OpenShift MariaDB Cartridge.