There are many reasons for IT civilians depend on fine “cloud-based” web services such as anything from google, hotmail, flickr, youtube, ad infinitum. It saves them system administration effort and may improve reliability and remote access. However, there are some problems, the most basic of which is one’s conversion from a user to a product. For one’s privacy, one’s data, and one’s attention is the product, sold to advertisers or whomever, in exchange for one’s convenience. That’s just not for me. I detest such proprietary convenience, and will stomp on its grave wearing nothing but a bath towel.

At least, less and less for me. My most recent step away from the cloud was to shut down my google reader account, and install my own Tiny-Tiny RSS software at my own premises. It’s not as good as google reader: it’s a lot slower for some reason. Given that it’s free software, and it’s running right here, I may opt to dig in and try to improve it. Or maybe I’ll just accept its lesser performance, and use that to wean me off of excessive RSS research. But at least, it’s my data, my server, and my decision. And my bath towel.

I’m blickmaniac and so is my wife.

To continue from my earlier series of accident reports, the failed Macondo Blow-out Preventer (BOP)‘s forensic analysis is now complete.. Fewer than a thousand pages, hop to it.

Imagine that you're a user of some nice steaming fresh piece of free software. You come across a problem. You are well-informed in the ways of the FOSS world, and so you make contact with the developers to ask them about it. What happens next is a tossup.

Sometime a diagnosis is instant:

• known bug, already fixed in later version. "version X will fix that."
• suspected fixed already: "Hey, can you install version X and try again?"
• not a bug. "You're doing it wrong. Read this FAQ."

Sometimes some followup is necessary by the developers. You might receive responses from a range of personas:

• the ghost. Does not respond.
• the blase. "Yeah whatever, it's a bug."
• the sadistic. "File a bug. You'll need to create a new account in our bug tracker. And reply to its confirmation email."
• the devil himself. "Oh, we only redistribute this package. Go talk to those upstream developers. And file a bug in their tracker after you create a new account. And reply to its confirmation email. Don't file a bug here; I don't want to hear about this again."
• the teacher. "Our web site was misleading. I fixed it, does it help?"
• the helpful. "I'll file a bug for you. Here's a URL you can monitor."
• the overachiever. "Here's a patch, please try it."

One does not need to spell out which of these is the most inviting.