Not long ago, chromatic wrote about one aspect of the quest to create software that doesn't suck. This time he's back with a proposal that's simultaneously practical and idealistic. Namely: If you as a whiz at a certain language or other aspect of programming want the world of programming to be better, you can help other people become programmers, or better programmers, with well-considered instruction. I hope someone in the Computer Science department at a high school near chromatic gives him a call, because he outlines here something more important than a "learn to program" curriculum.

assbarn writes "Ximian has announced that they have released Red Carpet, their new updater application and software management tool. This marks a huge improvement over their old updater service, with full dependencies (a la apt) for both RPM and dpkg systems, and a channel system that can provide any kind of software to your Linux system." I've included their release below - check it out for more information.

epeus asks: "I have noticed that most games for children (and adults) are Zero-sum by a game theory definition - you have to battle over limited resources either implictly (Chess, Frustration) or explicitly (Monopoly). Modern economic theory (dating back to the Enlightenment) makes it clear that the world is not like that - buying and selling creates value; confiscation destroys it. The 'Gift Culture' notion of Open Source described by ESR takes this a stage further. Can Slashdot readers suggest Non-Zero Sum games for children and adults to help break this mentality? The only ones I can think of are Victorian parlour games like Charades or Ghosts, where the point of the game is playing, not scoring it." I too think that there are times when we may focus too much on competition when we might be better off with entertainment. Don't get me wrong, there is a satisfying feeling to compete and win (or even to compete), but sometimes just the act of playing should be rewarding in and of itself. As always, feel free to share your thoughts on the subject.

physicman writes: "This weekend (3 & 4 Feb.) the first edition of the Open Source and Free Software Developers' European Meeting will be held in Brussels, Belgium. I think it is the first time that such a meeting occurs in Europe and it is very exciting to see what will come out of gathering at the same place people working on very different projects like Fyodor of nmap fame, Jeremy Allison from Samba, Rasterman (Enlightenment) and many others (full list here). Richard Stallman will also give a keynote about the danger of software patents. So, if you're in the neighborhood (for instance at the LinuxExpo in Paris) don't miss the opportunity to talk and hack (yes, there will be a hacking room too) with some of the top developers of the Open Source and Free Software movement!"

renai42 writes: "Rasterman gave a very interesting speech about his new EVAS canvas software at Linux.conf.au this week. This LinuxToday.com.au article gives a fair idea of the gist of the speech. EVAS is interesting stuff for the Linux community - a hardware accelerated X desktop with anti-aliased fonts and alpha blending." They've been claiming that the next Enlightenment will be the fastest WM around thanks mostly to EVAS.

The U.S. codified the idea of constitutionally-guaranteed privacy, but other countries do a much better job of protecting it these days. Many Europeans own their own data, and Canada actually has a privacy commissioner. That's not likely to happen here anytime soon. In the U.S., we may never be able to control our own data again, or protect ourselves from the indiscriminate use of databases and unaccountable institutions to make decisions that affect our personal, financial and work lives. Nor do many people seem to care if corporations own and sell the details of their lives.

We got a bunch of cool questions Monday for LinuxPPC dude (and recent near-death drunk driver accident victim) Jason Haas. Here, today, are his responses.

Chronic reviewer chromatic writes again, this time with a review of the newest iteration of what is probably the emblematic Perl book, the O'Reilly camel book. Read on to see how it stacks up to earlier versions of that work, and whether your Perl skills would benefit from reading through it.

bradipo writes "I was watching Level 9 for the first time and I thought I saw a glimpse of a linux desktop, so I kept watching. Sure enough, they were using Linux as the computer that a couple of kids were using to view NASA documents, etc... I captured as many as I could with my nifty tv capture card. It looks to me like they were using Enlightenment or WindowMaker or possibly both together."

One writer refers to flaming as "teletextual incendiarism," the best term I've ever seen, and flamers as "homo incinerans." Conventional thinking is that flaming is the online equivalent of barbarism, but it's much more complicated than that. Flaming may be the canary in the coal mine, a barometer of how free cyberspace is or stays. It may also be a kind of virtual role-playing, the kind done more knowingly on sex sites. I've gathered here some reflections on the evolution of flaming and metaflaming, including what Freud himself might make of it if he got online. He'd almost surely think that flamers have some issues to resolve.

Berkeley scholar Joseph Lockard (a doctoral candidate in English Literature) claims the idea of the virtual community is a Ponzi scheme, promoted by benighted utopians and elitists who equate access to the Net and the Web with social and democratic enlightenment. This myth has been virtually unchallenged for years, he says, and in a provocative and interesting essay called Progressive Politics, Electronic Individualism, and the Myth of Virtual Community, Lockard claims that it's nothing more than a bunch of hooey. Does anybody out there think virtual communities are real?

In Technoromanticism, a University of Edinburgh architect agrees that the computer may represent the pinnacle of scientific and technological acheivement, but, he argues, some of the most revolutionary ideas surrounding cyberspace are grounded in old movements like the Enlightenment, something techies tend to forget. Warning: This is heavy-handed academic writing but with a fascinating premise.

The tech culture is becoming a elitist society with no coherent political values, poorly prepared to deal with real politicians, who pass real laws like the DMCA. "How could they take my Napster away?" lamented one recent e-mailer. A new book by journalist Paulina Borsook takes an even sharper look at techno-narcissism and hostility. The tech culture, she says, is at times self-centered and selfish.

From July 19th through 22nd, the Ottawa Linux Symposium 2000 provided hardcore technical seminars, conferences and demonstrations to a crowd of over five hundred. Like last year, there were no booth babes, no tradeshow floor with T-shirt giveaways and hype. OLS is all about the tech, and made no apologies.

A new book argues that gender discrimination laws and software technologies are combining to destroy privacy in the United States. At particular risk is the American notion of the "Inviolate Personality," -- the part of every person's private thoughts, deeds and communications thought to be beyond the reach of public and governmental exposure and scrutiny. For those who love to speak and roam freely online, this is no small loss. First of two parts (so they'll both be shorter).

Media hotshots and junkies were breathing heavily last week after Salon and CBS.com announced layoffs and APBNews.com had a near-death experience. These and other new media "setbacks" prompted some gleeful, almost poignant predictions that old media might return from the grave. Don't put any money on it. The media war of the future isn't between "old" and "new" media, already meaningless terms, but between Open and Closed media.

Individualism is the only response to corporatism. But it's lousy work with few rewards, rarely bringing promotion, wealth, or even much chance of success. Mostly, you just tick people off. Online, you might increasingly run afoul of corporatist laws and DMCA-citing lawyers. You do get to hang out with other grumpy, discontented people. Second in a series. (Read More).

Welcome to The Corporate Republic, a new kind of social entity that transcends geographic boundaries and is exerting growing control over technology, work, privacy, creativity, media, law, entertainment, politics and commerce. Everywhere, individuals and indvidualism and free choice and speech are under the gun and on the run. First of a series. (Read More).

linux_penguin asks: "I've been using Linux for a few years now, and have only just hit the wall I believe most intermediate users hit at some time... I hate RPM and all of its idiosyncracies, and I hate all the clutter and unnecessary junk most distributions install. I wanted to compile Enlightenment from CVS, and it turned into a major hassle due to RPM dependencies and libraries being spread everywhere. What I would like to achieve is an absolute basic install, and then build the system up slowly with source (with most stuff being installed into /usr/local hopefully, leaving the basic install clean and untouched). I know this is a fairly tall order, but has anyone achieved this to any degree and can anyone give me advice? What's the best distro for *this purpose*? Or am I better off building my box from the ground up, to the point of compiling *everything* from source? I would like to use this as a learning experience to gain greater knowledge of Linux and how it works."

Tom asks: "I've heard a lot of talk recently about how Sun is going the wrong way with Java and we need an open source replacement for 'write once, run anywhere'. What I want to know is: how many people really support this notion?" Although I think such a concept would be nice, Java has strayed from this and has become Yet Another Language. Don't get me wrong, like any language, Java has its strengths and weaknesses, but I'm wondering if the Write-Once-Run-Anywhere concept is better found in your average scripting language (ala Perl, PHP, Python and others) rather than large scale languages like Java, and C. Click below for more details on this subject.