OpenSource vs. Commercial

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

If you don't know what I do, some of this might be a little confusing, and you might take me out of context, and fueling the fire (or being fueled by the current fire) of the Open Source vs. Commercial software battle. While I might be, I mean no harm to either OpenSource communities, or the commercial software vendors/developers.

But I work with Softgrid. Currently owned by Microsoft, as part of their Desktop Optimization Package, it basically takes a piece of software, the files, the registry entries, and all the things it installs, and bundles it together in one happy package to be sent to a client computer on demand. Not too shabby.

But certain pieces of software make my head hurt to no end. I even made a List 'o Hate for them. I have noticed a major difference between commercial applications and their open source counterparts, recently.

Last Friday, I began sequencing a number of open source applications, believing I would only be able to get a couple done in a day. Boy, I was wrong. I got six (6) open source applications sequenced and working in under four (4) hours. Yesterday, the 14th, I did five (5) in three (3) hours time. Today, this morning, I did nine (9) in just over four (4) hours.

Now, given, many of these are simple applications. They lack the complexity and support that the commercial applications have. Many of these rely on the user community to have support, and that can be problematic at times.

However, when you compare these numbers (number of applications against hours required to produce a working sequence) against that of a commercial application, I'm half tempted to start telling our clients (faculty, staff, and students) that I will not sequence something that is not open source.

What is it about programming that makes these commercial applications so ... bulky? Complex? Conveluted? Painful? No matter the term I use, I do not believe I can convey the actual feeling I have for some of these commercial applications.

When will these major corporations see they are hurting the administrators that have to support their software? Some of these pieces of software have grown and grown and grown over years of development, patching over the patch. At least some groups (like the Mozilla Organization) have started from scratch again and again, to get the cleanest possible product (Firefox. 'Nuff said). I would like to see Microsoft take a step back, look at Office, and decide to do it all over again from nothing. Reverse engineer by picture only. No code, no quick-starts. And let everyone else see what they're doing, and give actual bug reports rather than doing it all internal.

Too much to ask? Meh, I can hope, right?

Oddities

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Well, as with any new site I've done, there are some hick-ups. For example, I did have a separate gallery page.
Did. Key word there.

If anyone has attempted to view http://gallery.harshmage.com/ lately, it's been down. That's the oddity I'm referring to. It seems between SilverStripe and the Menalto Gallery2, one of them didn't like the other. To the fact that the files in the Gallery2 folder were shutting down the main site completely. I didn't understand what was going on until I deleted everything related to Gallery2. Quite suddenly, the main site came back up, hence why I'm able to post again.

For those who know about the Gallery2 page (gallery.harshmage.com), it will be back up in a while. I've got it backed up, fear ye not.

The New

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Welcome to the new Central. This is the third iteration of the site, so please do not hesitate to look around!

Application Amazement

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 00:00:00 -0700

So I've been working on a list in my Sharepoint site at work, on listing all the applications we have delivered via Softgrid. 165. Not too shabby.

By the end of the Spring semester, I should top us out at 170 active applications.
Granted, I need to retire some, replace others, and upgrade where needed (Gaim is no long Gaim, it's Pidgin). But that's another policy I need to pass to the directors (and the V.P. of I.T.) and get approval on. Because, let's face it, WS_FTP 95 is...dead. Dead and gone. Why we still have it, I'm not sure.

Movement 2; Da Fixin's!

Fri, 09 May 2008 00:00:00 -0700

I've had to move the Silverstripe system into a directory all on its own. Subdomains were encountering errors, and causing me much headache.

Weddings, Training, and Consulting...

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 00:00:00 -0700

Today makes the countdown to one month till Kady and I are married. At least on my half of this, I know everything I've been through, and all the mistakes and misfortunes I've met, have all been worth it to realize, cherish, and know completely how much I love her.

But since it is a month away, and we've been stressing over it, I'll not post all of the headaches we've had together (...I know the word 'organza', know what it's used for, and so much more. How scary is that?!?).

Besides that, I'll be attending a four-day long training session on Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 (aka, Softgrid 4.5). It'll be a lot on what Microsoft has changed, but likely to be partially a repeat on what I already know.

Another of the colleges within the Maricopa Community College system is going to be rolling out Softgrid for their campus as well. I've been deep into their lair to assist in this, which has brought me to a thought in my head; could I make a living like this? Consulting? I don't know, but I'll see what might be done after my training sessions.

Softgrid with Privilege Guard

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

So I'm working on another set of experiments again. See, we know on the campus that our regular users are plagued with updates on a regular basis (Quicktime, Flash/Shockwave, Acrobat Reader, etc...).

Softgrid makes software run as just the user, but think that it's an administrator. Local software, plugins, and the like, however, do not run as an administrator, and so the regular user cannot update that software.

In comes Privilege Guard. Choose the executable of your liking, and it elevates to the Administrator level, even when logged in as a regular user.

So far, so good. I've made a few tests, but I've got a lot more to look at and determine. But it looks good, and it would be a boon to what we're doing now.

Site Change

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

I removed the redirection from the site. Yes, it's still a redirection in a sense, but it's using frames. Makes the site load just that much faster for everyone (and myself) and makes the URL stay looking the same! So clear out those caches!

Wed..ed!

Fri, 19 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

So I've been slacking to say, yes, Kady and I were wed on August 8th, 2008 (over a month ago!).

I'm only slacking a little. Honestly, it was a beautiful ceremony, and everything and everyone were on key. Sure, I was the one who was stressed out on our wedding day, but Kady wasn't! Which I'm very proud of her for!
We've got several photos (which I've been slacking on getting on the wedding site), and a lot of good memories!
Still slowly cleaning up the house from the preparations we made (boxes galore), and smiling while we're at it. Kady keeps telling me, we're not getting married again; the stress of preparation really got to both of us, and we're not going through it again!
If anyone from the wedding is reading, thank you for everything you did to help us. Having family and friends together in one place had a very calming effect on both of us, and it was exactly what we wanted.

So anyway, now that I'm getting a slowdown at work, I might actually get a post in now and then. Till next time!

Privilege Guard

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

I know I've already posted about Softgrid and Privilege Guard, but I'd like to post another item that I typed up to help my case with the management here. Hopefully, if any of my IT Ninja brethren are reading, they might find interest in this.

Privilege Guard will allow our users to run particular applications with elevated permissions. For example, Apple Quicktime is updated frequently. On our systems, it will crash when an update is found on the Apple website (either standalone, or inside of a browser, taking the browser with it). However, if the Quicktime updating process is given elevated privileges, it will update and continue on as normal, without interruption to the student, faculty, or staff member. When Apple does these updates, we have a lag-time between workstation image updates, and with Privilege Guard, it will allow us some breathing room, with less calls to the Helpdesk, and less man-hours going out to manually update individual machines.

Flash Player, Shockwave, Acrobat Reader, Java, and others are in the same category, where updates are frequent, unannounced, and difficult to quickly update and deploy campus wide. By giving our users the ability to update these softwares on the fly, we can prepare and deploy the updated workstation images at a planned, systematic, and easier pace.

Privilege Guard also gives us the ability to allow users to install particular pieces of software on their local desktop. Palm PDA software is a good example, where some versions of the Palm software will only work with certain versions of PDA. Privilege Guard will match the file name, the SHA-1 hash (much like md5 sums, where a particular series of numbers are generated from the original file, and can be compared against the copied file), and/or the Certificate from the vendor, and allow the user to install the software without need for administrative rights to the whole computer.

To update the list of software to run at that elevated level, a simple XML file can be updated and pushed out via Active Directory to all machines across the eGCC domain.

BlizzCon 2008

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

We're going out to Anaheim today after lunch. Kady's going to Disneyland for their Halloween Extravaganza, and I'll be next door at BlizzCon! We'll have plenty of photos to share for both parts of our trip, never doubt that!

Ninth Chevron Re-Launch!

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

I've finished my reworking of the Ninth Chevron site, using the Dragonfly CMS!

The Ad banners aren't working the way they were with PostNuke, but I'm going to see about making the area where the PN site was advertising in generate from a php script. Should be easy, right? Right.

The forums are all set up again, and user registration is open (since it uses a decent CAPTCHA).

Fallout 3, Wrath, and the Election

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 00:00:00 -0800

I have to admit, I am a Fallout fan. I played the original two games, and loved them. The amount of... stuff was incredible. The games were just about as punny as World of Warcraft (which, by far, is the punniest game of all time), with Dr. Who, Monty Python, and a whole slew of other references.

So when I sat down to play Fallout 3, I was expecting a 3rd person, click-to-play game. Oh boy, was I ever wrong. The first person aspect had brought the world of the Wasteland to life. No longer was I bound to a particular square resolution size to see what was around me, being replaced with the mouse look to see what was the Washington D.C. area.

That is what has brought the idea of the Wasteland to a living, breathing world. I have to hand it to Bethesda; the world of Elder Scrolls is one that they have owned since the beginning, and stepping up to take Interplay's Wasteland/Fallout universe was a big, big task. They did so, with the same incredible, expansive, dynamic, and random skills that Oblivion (Elder Scrolls IV) had taken to make.

Yes, the world of Fallout 3 is smaller in map size than Oblivion. Yes, that might make some people say "But why didn't you make it bigger?". A fair question to be had, but then, I've played so many hours in Oblivion, and I have yet to find all of the little waypoints. There are just so many out there, that I don't think anyone can find them all. And so, the Fallout 3 map is smaller so they can find everything in a reasonable amount of play time.

Wrath of the Lich King is set for release on November 13th, which is awesome. Finally going to have a crack at Arthas after all this time. I've played in the Beta, and I am honestly pleased at the content Blizzard has put into this one. The Burning Crusade was nice, but it could have been better in story line. Wrath, on the other hand, is rich in story, with encounters with Arthas being rampant, even if he one-shots you as an in-game event.

There are some things I don't get, such as the Vurkyl, but I'm sure we'll see what becomes of them. I think the idea that they're a vampiric race has been quashed, as they didn't seem to be that way in the Beta. Yes, there are some vampires now, based off the Blood Elves that were Scourgized, and they are rare (maybe three in the game so far?).

Oh yes, and the US Election is this year. Today, in fact. I've yet to get to the polls, as the lines this morning were longer than I wanted to stick around, but I'll get to them later.

And, I'm voting "Do Over, No Confidence". Honest and truly. I'll vote on the propositions that are on the ballot this year, but as for the new President? Do over. I don't think either of them will be able to be the middle-ground that they should be. McCain or Obama. They're both the extremist for their parties. If elected, they'll try to change the country very radically, which will end up causing them to be impeached, and their Vice Presidents will be moved up. Which makes me think, that on either case of the VPs, I still don't like them. Oh well.

I me, an individual, a committee of one.
Pledge dedicate all of my worldly goods to give without self-pity.
Allegiance my love and my devotion.
To the Flag our standard, Old Glory, a symbol of freedom. Wherever she waves, there's respect because your loyalty has given her a dignity that shouts freedom is everybody's job.
(of the) United that means that we have all come together.
States (of America) individual communities that have united into 48 great states. 48 individual communities with pride and dignity and purpose, all divided with imaginary boundaries, yet united to a common purpose, and that's love for country.
and to the Republic (For Which It Stands) Republic ... a state in which sovereign power is invested in representatives chosen by the people to govern. And government is the people and it's from the people to the leaders, not from the leaders to the people.
One Nation One Nation ... meaning, so blessed by God.
Indivisible incapable of being divided.
With Liberty which is freedom, the right of power to live one's own life, without threats, fear, or some sort of retaliation.
And Justice the principle or qualities of dealing fairly with others.
For All For all ... which means, boys and girls, it's as much your country as it is mine.