Devuan

There is a new startup Linux distro in town:
Devuan.

https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng

The theory is that it is Debian, but without SytemD.

The people behind it are still working on what infrastructure is needed, before development can start.

So what is the topic that has the greatest discussion?
Release Names.

A few people are trying to determine what hardware is needed, and where to locate it.
A few more are trying to decide what should be included.

In retrospect, what they greybeards should have done, and perhaps are doing, is create a public list that they all but ignore, and a private list for discussing infrastructure, and what the distro will include.

Then, when the beta release is ready, announce it, and go fully public.

Mobile Device Patents

Since the SCOTUS ruled on Bilski v Kappos back on 28 June 2010, it seems that that the mobile device market is under attack by patent trolls.

The microserf that uses the moniker Paul Allen has had his pet patent troll file a lawsuit about his non-patents. (How much did Paul Allen bribe the USPTO to award those patents? There is no way that they could have been otherwise awarded, because they are so obvious.)
Those patents:

• No. 6,263,507, "Browser for Use in Navigating a Body of Information, With Particular Application to Browsing Information Represented By Audiovisual Data."
• No. 6,034,652, "Attention Manager for Occupying the Peripheral Attention of a Person in the Vicinity of a Display Device."
• No. 6,788,314, "Attention Manager for Occupying the Peripheral Attention of a Person in the Vicinity of a Display Device."
• No. 6,757,682, "Alerting Users to Items of Current Interest."

Interview Questions

I'm not sure how I wandered into the article in Forbes There are Only Three True Job Interview Questions. That isn't a new insight. What Color Is Your Parachute listed them back around 1980.
What caught my eye was a reader's comment

I think these questions are irrelevant in the context that if a company is ASKING YOU if you can do your job this assumes that they WANT you to do your job otherwise why are they asking you to be hired.

There are companies where HR is divorced from the rest of the organization.
One memorable example is the company that hired a system admin, and then fired them, as soon as they learned that the new sysadmin was working on a AA (Systems Management) at the local community college.  Before the individual was hired, the company knew that the idividual:

• Had no formal training in the field;
• Had plans to obtain formal training;
• Had taught themselves everything they knew about systems
  administration;

When the company found out that the individual was enrolled in classes related to AA (Systems Administration), they were fired. Attending those classes violated the unofficial company policy.
That is a clear cut case of management, and corporate policy preventing employees from doing their job correctly. In most instances, it is far less obvious:

• Redoing the corporate intranet, but not ensuring that those changes meet BSI BS 8878:2010, the Australian Disability Discrimination Act 1992, the US Section 504, etc
• Distributing official policy changes that are neither copy-edited,nor proof read:
• The changes describe the method that was not to be followed, as if it was the correct way to do the thing;
• Omitting the dress code for female staff. The whole point of distributing the dress code, was due to complaints about women wearing inappropriate attire;
• Failing to provide the tools required to do the job properly:
• I'm not talking about construction, where the crafts person is expected to have their own tools, and even then, most job sites contain a toolbox that can be used when a worker doesn't have the right tools for the job;
  
• I am talking about things like the company that required the skip tracer to go online, but provided neither Internet access, nor a computer to do so;
• Providing the wrong tools for the job:
• An example being the sandwich shop that expected employees to cut cheese slices three millimeters thick, but provided a blunt cheese knife, and no slicer;
• City Directories, CrissCross Directories, and Reverse Directories that are more than five years old;
• Not taking complaints about sexual harassment seriously:
• How many employees realize that even if the activity is not directed at them personally, they can submit a sexual harassment report?
• Punishing the individual that files the sexual harassment report; 

I do not how much of those behaviours can be picked up during an interview with HR. These are things that a good due diligence background report on the company should pick up on.

There are some companies who use DMCA take down notices, SLAPPS, and the like, to prevent damaging information about them to become publicly known.  The major examples are vendors of guaranteed flopportunities.

Traffic Sources: Search terms.

On one of my other blogs, I was looking at the search terms that generated the most hits.

In position # 6 is "topp twins untouchble girls bit torrent".

Untouchable Girls is a documentary about the Topp Twins.  None of the posts on my other blog mention either those folk singers, or the documentary.  Dionysus the Twin is the closest that blog gets to mentioning twins.  In one post, I do discuss torrents as a means of sharing files amongst users. 

LiberOffice

Back in October, a couple of developers, and community leaders in OpenOffice.org formed a new organization, and created LibreOffice.

They had a plan, but not a very well developed one. They had some ideas, but nothing laid out in concrete. The whole effort felt as if it had been drawn up on a Friday, implemented on a Saturday, and announced on Monday.

Two months later, and people are still wondering what it will offer. Or what it won't offer.

One of the issues raging on the LibreOffice mailing lists is whether or not LibO should be able to save, or export to OOXML, or, more precisely, the variant called DocX by Microsoft, and is allegedly the native file format of Microsoft Office.

The philosophically pure approach would be to neither read, nor write any file format implemented by Microsoft.

More statistical wierdness

I started a new blog in February.  I have not given the URL to anybody.  The only publicity I've done, is to casually mention that I would be blogging about that subject matter. 

Today I casually look at the stats for that site, and low and behold:

• The most hits are from Iran;
• The biggest traffic generator is a site in Singapore;

Whilst it is nice to know where the traffic comes from, the statistical data provides nothing that explains the source of the traffic.

Say what?

I was looking at the stats for this blog.

The most common keyword search for this site is:
shop to earn compensation plan.

That implies that my posts about Mary Kay, and Shop To Earn http://plainsofninsianna.blogspot.com/2008/07/shop-to-earn.html are what gets people here.

However, my post about Thunderbird is the one that has the most views.

This is not from "All Time", where older posts might reasonably be expected to have more views than newer posts.  This is from last month's stats. OTOH, I haven't been posting much to this blog recently.