Coredump

Another foil to all that Web X.X thingies.

“With so many places to tag so many things, how could one person keep track of it all?” Well, enter Supr.c.ilio.us, the “World’s First Social Social Tagging Site Tagging Site”. Their top tag is, uh, “tagging”.

I found a copy of The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court by Bob Woodward (All the President’s Men) and Scott Armstrong in a second-hand-books sale.

It’s a bit outdated — it portrays the Warren Court in the 1970s during the Nixon era — but it makes for an interesting read of landmark Supreme Court decisions of those days. Written in Woodward’s classic journalistic style ala-All the Presidents’ Men, it relies heavily on “background” sources that can at times sound too much like office gossip. The sourcing is understandable, though, since the US Supreme Court has a long tradition of not showing its hand, of making its decision processes a secret. In the introduction, the writers say that no other institution has controlled the way they are viewed by the public.

IANAL, but this makes for a pretty interesting read. Besides, for Php50, this one’s a steal.

The Philippine Linux Users Group (PLUG) has a new set of officers.

The new set is an interesting lineup of old hands and new faces, with a broad range of advocacies. The regions were represented as well, just in time for PLUG’s goal of becoming the umbrella organization of LUGs nationwide.

Here’s hoping that the new board maintains and surpasses the momentum and enthusiasm of the present one.

In a recent conversation at the company cafeteria, the talk shifted to how difficult it is to use OpenOffice.org over Microsoft Word. Some colleagues were complaining that the time it takes them to learn the ropes is eating into their “productivity” (read: less coffee trips to the pantry).

One co-worker commented, “‘Buti na lang, libre.” (”It’s a good thing it’s free.”) I asked, smirking, “Which one, the coffee or the software?”

I would have launched into a “free-beer-and-free-speech” tirade, were it not for the yummy lunch we’re having, but just the same, I told them that the software being free doesn’t just mean the bottomline. Of course, there would be migration issues, but don’t blame OpenOffice.org (and other free and/or open source software {FOSS}) for that — blame Microsoft for creating, nay, subverting standards and locking them in so they’d only work in MS products. “Besides,” I said, “TANSTAAFL.” (Big puzzled frowns follow.)

“There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch,” I clarified. Shifting to open source software — or any other tool for that matter — entails costs. Even if it’s supposedly “free” as in you don’t pay anything (except maybe for the bandwidth when downloading the software), there are still other things to consider: the learning curve, the time it takes in moving up or scaling, etc.

But having costs don’t mean it’s just as bad as the old (proprietary) one. The argument that if it does cost something, why make the shift at all, will just not hold water anymore. Because there are other benefits, as well. Like, not being held hostage by a single entity and being forced to upgrade (and adjust, and re-learn) whenever they tell you to. Like, being able to freely give away to others without fear of some mob-like outfit breathing down your neck demanding that you pay them. Like, being able to fix things yourself, get under the hood, if you are able and you feel up to it, instead of waiting and twiddling your thumbs while some flunkie tech support guy gives you a runaround whenever something goes bunk.

So it may not really be a freebie, but FOSS lets you do these other things that you may otherwise be missing when using MS and others.

And speaking of lunch, I almost forgot to pay on the way out.