Technology, Open Source and Shiny Things

So in general these suggestions are meant for Canadian Government Websites. I believe that these sites are especially guilty of the following problems but are also applicable to other sites.

1. Problem: Poorly implemented or no RSS. Even if present it is usually useless, hand-generated, out of date or doesn’t pertain to very much of anything.
Solution: Implement RSS or use a CMS that has RSS built in. Even most good programming languages have excellent XML handling built in.

2. Problem: anything.aspx
While aspx is a semi-decent programming language, using it doesn’t encourage you to use some of the great CMSs or Frameworks like Drupal or Django. Not to mention it screams to the world that you are using windows to host your site. Terribly insecure.
Solution: Use different languages that can run on several platforms to have a heterogeneous environment.

3. Problem: IIS
No respectable outfit, ever… EVER uses IIS as their web server. And it leads to using html mangling programs like Adobe Contribute and Front Page.
Solution: Use Linux/BSD/OpenSolaris or if you must, I think SCO is still around right?

4. Problem: www.example.com vs example.com
Every good website since 1996 has fixed this problem, one redirects to the other. When I go to a government site and I see “Under Construction” because IIS is misconfigured I think less of politicians.
Solution: Correct configuration of IIS or switch to Apache.

5. Problem: streaming WMV etc.
While I believe that governments should disseminate content in open and non-patent encumbered formats(I’m a believer that people shouldn’t have to have a license to read a word document or play an mp3), and even though (most) browsers support HTML5 elements that allow for embedding video, I realize that using flash is the most realistic option. Most government sites don’t even do that, They stream video in wmv and audio in wma. Using this is a bit jenk on a Mac and technically possible(but practically impossible) on Linux. Also transcriptions should be available for every video(for people using text browsers) or captioned.
Solution: Use Flash or open formats like ogg, or better yet use both.

6. Problem: Intelligible URL structure
I am a believer that I should be able to navigate 90% of a website by typing plain English words into a URL. Call me old fashioned but it is just the way that I feel. HINT: It also keeps the site easier to maintain. If the URL structure is a mess, the code is probably a mess.
Solution: Use a language like python or frameworks that encourage or require clean URLs.

7. Problem: English or French?
Every Time that you go to a Canadian Government site for the first time, the site will ask you what language you would like to view the site in. Every browser that has been made in many years has been able to send information about your language preferences. Most English speakers don’t realize this because they are too dominant to ever run into the problem. But if that is too difficult to implement for the government, then enable a checkbox that says “Remember my selection whenever I visit a Government of Canada Website.”
Solution: Learn about cookies.

8. Problem: Colour Scheme
No one worries about the 216-256 “web-safe” colours anymore. NO ONE USES 8-BIT DISPLAYS ANYMORE. But if you had been to a government website even today it seams that they are still subscribing to this philosophy. The design of the sites could be so much more appealing with better colours.
Solution: Use colours.

9. Problem: “What’s New”, “Top of Page” and other similarly useless links.
“What’s new” is a throw back to when site were smaller, they quickly become out of date and are made redundant by things like RSS feeds. Top of page is a throwback to when browsers did not have scroll bars. Guess what? They do now. “A-Z Index” this is an interesting one. Some usability experts believe that “you should be able to access all of a site’s content within X number of clicks”. I would append one thing to this “you should be able to access all of a site’s content within X number of clicks and in under 1-2 hours”. An (A-Z Index) is useful when you approach $items>26. However, there is an upper limit to this.
Solution: Top of page might be useful for accessibility, or text browsers. Do browser detection. If the user is using a browser that would benefit from this show it, if not hide it with Javascript.

10. Problem: Open Data.
I have issues with Crown Copyright. I believe that, in most cases, works that a government create should be owned by the people and not by “The Monarch”. I am sure the queen could care less that she has all the rights to the 2006 Ministry of fisheries report on salmon populations. I was amazed, when during a recent copyright consultation roundtable, Minister of Industry, Tony Clement did not understand why it mattered that Canadians should hold the rights to government works. A good compromise to this would be to make both the crown and Canadians both rights holders. It doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive.
Also government Data should be made available to the public as easily as possible. Either by dumping the raw data on the internet or creating open databases with APIs to access the data. NOTE: It is important that crown copyright be fixed before this happens. I should not have to pay money to get at government data, nor waste paper in the process. All I should need is an internet connection and the desire to find out.
Solution: Create a mechanism and reform copyright so that this information can be disseminated more easily. Embrace Creative Commons. Follow the lead of the Americans.

I have recently downloaded and installed Kubuntu 9.10 and it is great! The problem I have always had KDE is that half of the applications are much better than most Windows/Mac/GNOME apps, and half of them are about 90% as good as the other platforms. Well I have used Kubuntu 9.10 for a bit now and I must say it is giving me very little to complain about. Network has a little ways to go yet. New installer bling is great! Some great new improvements to gwenview. You will also notice that unlike in my 9.04 review I didn’t have to turn compositing off to get screenshots. (Most) compositing effects now show up in screenshots! Congrats to Pinheiro for his work on icons and theming. K3B looks great now that it is integrated into KDE4 as well as the newest air desktop theme. Kopete can now integrate with Skype. Awesome

I was disappointed that they decided not to include the Arora in this version, as I think it shows a lot of promise. There is now a Firefox installer included in the menu structure. I also installed Chromium from a launchpad PPA and even though Firefox and Chromium are GTK apps they finally(Firefox especially) are more integrated with the desktop. In previous releases Firefox wouldn’t know what to open files with unless you had GTK apps installed.

Great job KDE and Kubuntu Teams!

I am a documentary junky. I also love to talk copyright. So when a film comes along that blends these two interests I get very excited. RIP! a Remix Manifesto is probably one of the most important Canadian docs I have every seen. I recommend that you see it. Good news too, the Canadian who made it is experimenting with an interesting business model. The film is under a Creative Commons(BY-NC-SA) license. Meaning as long as you tell people where you got it, and are doing so non-commercially and you release any changes under the same license, you are free to do whatever you would like with it. The creator sells the film through iTunes as well as a “Pay What You Want” through the RipRemix.com website as well as a DVD.

But I live in Canada… Media is never simple in Canada. For some reason this “Pay What You Want” digital distribution method is only for Americans. Even if it is in the iTunes Store I don’t want to have to deal with the DRM. I don’t have a DVD player or TV to watch the dvd on and I live in a rural area that is hard to get packages to. So my last resort is to get it from the Bittorrents… Perfectly legal use of bittorrent when the film is under a Creative Commons license. The problem with this is that no one gets payed. And when no one gets payed we don’t see movies as important as this ever made again.

So I wrote a letter:

I have become quite a fan of the NFB of Canada. It is doing important work. I watched RIP! a Remix Manifesto when it was in theatres. Went to see it twice. Joined the Facebook group. Was very excited to here that it would be released on a pay what you want basis. I was clearly disappointed when I was geo-blocked apon trying to do so! This is content that I am happy to pay for, that was funded by my government and that I payed to see in theatres(in Canada). I understand that there is a DVD available, but I live in a rural area and it is very difficult to have packages shipped. Why am I, as a Canadian treated like a second class citizen while the Americans get to experiment with an exciting new business model. I want to be part of that.

This movie is more, not less relevant to Canadians and they should be able to see it. If someone could clear this up for me that would be great.

I bought an MXL 990 USB mic and am very pleased to say that it sounds great! I am also glad to report that this works great on my Kubuntu box. When I bought it I was not sure if it would work on Linux but it showed up straight away. It was $100 and is worth every penny. Great sound quality. The mic even shows up as an MXL mic. Good show!

So I have upgraded my Kubuntu 9.04 box to the KDE 4.3 Beta and RCs and am really impressed with the progress that they are making.

Add: deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/kubuntu-ppa/backports/ubuntu jaunty main to your /etc/apt/sources.list or even within KPackageKit and do an sudo apt-get update and sudo apt-get upgrade.

They have made some awesome improvements to the System Settings control panel. They have made some awesome improvements to the information area of the kicker and changes the Wifi plasmoid that I don’t totally understand. The system tray is now collapsible. There is a new feature that allows you to peek into folders and displays some of the contents of the folder on the icon. There are now a lot of options for your desktop including using marble to display the moon as your desktop and stuff like that. I am glad to see that there is a constant improvement of KDE.

I worked late into the morning hours on this mock-up for a Kubuntu bootable USB Creator. There currently is one for regular Ubuntu, written mostly in python and of course in GTK+. I am gonna try to port it to Qt. Let me know if you would like to help out as my c++ is sort of like my French i.e. not good.

I run an installation of VMWare ESXi which is really a great product for server based virtualization. My only complaint is that there is no Linux admin client.  So I have to keep an XP VM around all the time to administer it.  The only reason that I bring this up is that ESXi needs a good chunk of space for its datastore.  Well you can certainly hook up a whole bunch of physical drives.  You can also set up an expensive fibre channel SAN.  Well, both solutions will work, but obviously have drawbacks.

Enter Openfiler.  Openfiler is a Linux distro based off of rPath Linux.  It offers an awesome web-front-end and supports: rsync, smb/cifs, NFS, WebDAV, FTP and iSCSI protocols.  So as we can see, this is a great way to easily set up a NAS for a media box or for your network based backup solution.  You can also tie it into directory services like Active Directory or LDAP, but I haven’t tried this.  It also has some of the easiest software RAID setup I have used.

So these sreenshots are showing some of the steps in setting up an iSCSI volume from 2 virtual hard disks on a VM and two of the partitions are in RAID-1.  This of course is not really a realistic setup and is for illustration purposes only

Openfiler is available as an ISO for installing on a beige box, as a VMWare VM as well as many other kinds of VMS

I have been running the beta and alpha of the latest release of Kubuntu for a while now, but yesterday I went scorched earth. I backed up all of my data and wiped my drive and reinstalled with the latest version.

The first thing that I noticed was that the live cd booted very quickly. My favorite addition to the installer was the new map for the time zone setting. It is a lot easier to use and better looking than the old one.

After the install, once again, faster boot times. I went all EXT4 for this install.  I am loving it so far.  Most of the improvements are to KDE 4 generally.  Things like easier installation of themes, my favourite feature missing from GNOME.  Kubuntu has also included a new package manager, KPackageKit which is much better than Adept.  At first I thought it was too simple, but it has definitely grown on me.  The most unexpected aspect of the new release is that suspend and resume work flawlessly on my Toshiba Tecra A9 laptop.  The last feature that does not work is using an external monitor.

All in all the Kubuntu and KDE team are to be commended for there work.  Awesome job guys!!!

I think that ssh is probably the most awesome thing that I have ever used on a computer. Not only does it allow you to be on another computer remotely, but if you configure it correctly it will allow you to login more securely than with a standard password. And once a computer has exchanged keys with the server you can login without a password securely. Awesome. One tool I found while learning is ssh-copy-id to get your key up to the server. One thing that wasn’t really explained well was scp, which allows you to copy over ssh.