Unix compatibility

Why are so many websites dysfunctional on Unix ?

Get this straight, right now, and don't ever forget it ...

The World Wide Web was invented by a scientist, Tim Berners Lee, on NeXTSTEP, a Unix Operating System, on the NeXT Cube, at CERN laboratories in Switzerland. Microsoft didn't contribute a damn single atom to it.

The first web browser was written by the NCSA, on Unix, it's called Mosaic and myself and others still have it on some of our older computers.

The servers and routers the internet depends on also run Unix, except a small faction trying to run servers on Windows. This is not unlike trying to cross an ocean in a disposable paper cup.

I've been writing HTML for almost as long as Tim Berners Lee himself. My code worked on every platform that can connect to the web, including working on cellphones from the beginning.

3 to 6 years later after scientists had done all the hard work, Microsoft jump on the bandwagon and behave as if they invented Operating Systems, User Interfaces, Computers and the Web ... they didn't. Suddenly the Web is flooded with badly written code, and badly designed and completely ugly websites, all from Windows users.

So why do countless websites hardly work at all in Unix, why can't people write code that runs properly, following the cross platform standards the Web is designed to run ?

How difficult can it be to learn Unix now, enough to run it and test HTML on it ?

It used to cost thousands of pounds but for the last 10 years it has been free in the form of FreeBSD or Linux, and SuSE linux is a professional enough Operating System to be the one used by Novell, Silicon Graphics, Sun and IBM, and now Microsoft.

These days installing Unix is as easy as booting from a CD and following the instructions, exactly as installing Windows.

The first Operating System to be distributed on CD was NeXTSTEP, the first Operating System to boot and run from a CD was BeOS.

Learning to write correct cross platform HTML, DHTML, CSS and Javascript in it is as simple as going to the W3Schools website of the organisation responsible for web standards and following the online tutorials and documentation there, which is all free.

If a person can't do that, what the hell are they doing designing web pages, and setting up webservers in the first place ? Doing it the Microsoft way is costing them money, for a limited result. Why waste so much effort on something inefficient ?

MS Linux

SuSE to be distributed by Microsoft ... OK, I'll be back after I've made and taken about a kilo of valium.

Google APIs

Every time I see a Google product, my imagination starts adding components together as if I were drag dropping them from a palette in Openstep's Project Builder and Interface Builder, it is something I cannot help, I am by nature a synthesist and this is how I think.

Google's expanding work is brilliant and a true compliment to the Object Oriented development of the old days of Openstep.

Recently I suggested they add Spreadsheets, Word processor and Database facilities to the new Google Apps for your Domain service, as most of this already exists within Google API's, as do some other interesting tools such as the Maps, Picasa photo tool, 3d tool and so on.

I also suggested a few times now the possibility of allowing users to select CSS templates from Google Page Editor or Blogspot to be set if desired individually, or globally, across Google based services, for example one's search home page, GMail and such.

For those who only use Google's search engine, and possibly GMail, there is a lot more to Google ... they are concerned with information, not just on the web, but the rest of the internet and everything else. To the extent they developed their own Distributed File System and now Optical Character Recognition.

A brief look at Google Labs and Google Code and you will see how busy they are.

EloneX addendum

Please also see the following well researched article published on The Register :

EloneX: the end of an era By Tim Phillips 18 Jul 2006 13:46

and the preceding articles which may also be of interest :

Elonex sketches phoenix PC plan By Mark Ballard 7 Jul 2006 12:03

Elonex sold to stationer By Mark Ballard 5 Jul 2006 11:15

Elonex deal hits the doldrums By Mark Ballard 3 Jul 2006 12:15

Rank outsider poised to buy Elonex By Mark Ballard 29 Jun 2006 11:15

Centerprise opts out of Elonex bidding By Mark Ballard 27 Jun 2006 12:22

Elonex: administrators lay off 28 By John Oates 15 Jun 2006 08:57

Elonex UK goes titsup By John Oates 13 Jun 2006 14:58

Obituary for EloneX PLC

I learned three days ago one of my favorite computer companies went bankrupt.

This was the one company that cared about the individual customer, and provided tireless aftersales support even on machines over ten years old. They built machines to last twenty five to thirty years, and even their monitor tubes lasted very well. They never told a customer to upgrade to the latest machines of their range, which was considerably good for a small London based company, and one of the first OEM IBM X86 compatible system makers. Furthermore, they supported the use of any X86 operating system the client needed and chose to use ; Windows, OS/2, BSD, Solaris, OPENSTEP, BeOS, QNX and Linux.

Elonex was founded in 1986 to offer computer and related IT services direct to customers allowing them to exercise more control and benefit from improved flexibility. Elonex is now one of the few UK manufacturers to have developed international sales with a strong customer base in France, Belgium, Switzerland and the Russian Federation. UK customers therefore benefit from a broader range of skills and experience.

* A BRIEF HISTORY OF ELONEX
* 1986 Elonex PLC founded.
* 1988 Bradford office opens.
* 1990 Elonex Belgium opens.
* 1991 Elonex Taiwan opens (procurement arm) and is awarded Microsoft OEM status.
* 1992 Elonex France, Israel and Switzerland established.
* 1995 Elonex Solutions Division formed, won MOD contract.
* 1996 Elonex E-Commerce introduced.
* 1997 Elonex wins NHS Supplies Authority (having previously supplied the Regional Authorities) and Gcat contracts.
* 1999 Elonex Gatwick opens as a new base for the Specialist Education Division and awarded NGfL Managed Service status.
* 2000 Elonex's Software Development Division established in Russia.
* 2000 Elonex becomes Microsoft EdLAR.
* 2001 Elonex wins Gcat/NHSCat contract for Hardware & Systems Integration, IT Managed Services and Third Party Maintenance categories.
* 2002 Awarded Becta Accredited Service Supplier status.
* 2003 Elonex wins a contract to supply under the Governments' Laptops for Teachers Initiative, earns supplier status for the Governments NHS National Programme for IT (worth £25m).
* 2004 Contract awarded to supply Intel® Centrino™ mobile technology-based laptops under the Essex e-Learning Foundation Initiative (£150m).

Quoted from About EloneX

The company's logo, slab format system designs and website style were also a living tribute to the unique style of NeXT Computer, Inc., as can be seen from the source of the above quotes and their website, in particular their Showroom

Unconscious rendered

I've been taking a break from research, and a needed break from the amount of work with source code and OS maintenance it requires.

Instead I've been relaxing, and occasionally playing graphically with molecules that interest me for various reasons, through usage in medical practice, growing them in asia or historical and spiritual association and such.

An example is Lotus. An important symbol in asian traditions of meditation, for it's gentle path between darkness and light, the apparent impurity of sleeping in the muddy bottom of a lake, and awakening a bright beautiful appearance, often white but many other colours as well for some specimens, and each of these equally well regarded, especially red, blue and indigo and purples.

Lotus also was a proposed choice last week for a header graphic for the new web site design of the BioCocoa project. The header can at this time be seen here, Option1 but might be moved or removed. If so, I might ask permission of the project admin and designer to mirror Option1 ... he and I seem to be the only people who like it and Option2 seems to be the design going ahead :)

Among near countless chemicals within Lotus are some genes that are of interest in research, but I have restrained myself from distraction, and loaded one of these gene's Protein Database file into one of my 3d molecular graphics and editing applications. Besides, there are enough highly competent teams in Japan researching Lotus Japonica already.

If I had dedicated machines such as a Silicon Graphics Octane2 I could have generated some interesting animations and Virtual Reality web pages, but last time I tried this on my Thinkpad and old G2 Macs, everything crashed.

Even using molecular graphics applications designed on SGI workstations, compiled and running fine under SuSE Linux, not nearly fast enough. I am used to having 25 computers, and being able to commit many of them to rendering as much as actual computations and simulations. Working with three, all of which need larger hard disks, is like having only one or two of 25 limbs useable.

Also this time I had trouble saving the close up images I had created, as mesh and include file for POV-Ray, to work on rendering the results outside of the molecular graphics suite I was using, and thus have a lot more system resources and be able to do this faster. Instead I had to use the suite's internal renderer.

Below is a small section of a 1024x768 pixel render from the gene 1CT9 from Lotus Japonica. I have edited the colours away from schemes in use for bioinformatics, which are to highlight some particular aspect or other, instead to evoke a sense of the general beauty of the Himalaya, Kasmir in particular, and the jungles at their foot.



1CT9 from Lotus Japonica

I also wanted to play with genes from Fragaria, Strawberry. Purely for the sake of scientific erotica, but this will take some time. Especially, I want to include non molecular elements in the scene, more accurately, a highly tasteful but very evocative female form.

Strawberries have a significance among Italian Sci Fi authors and Journalists I know ...
I want this scene rendered to my artistic aesthetic's satisfaction.

Fragole buone!

Ti voglio coperta di fragole, Venere di Milano ;)

The Secret of the Four Pillars of a Screenshot

Many centuries ago, in a remote monastery in the Himalayas, the technique of visualising different things, in real time, was mastered and refined. This when portrayed on silk framed canvas is known as The Four Pillars of a Screenshot.

These Four Pillars represent the full capability of diversity and potential. Traditionally, monks would visualise a Video player, a Waveform Editor, a 3d Molecular structure viewer, and a Fractal generator.

Alternately, some monasteries preferred the classic Word Processor/Spreadsheet/Database suite, Graphics/Photo suite, Web Browser, and Media Player.

Drivel

Then last night I find the header from TicTac template works again, and my dashboard is back to it's usual scheme.

This journal entry was uploaded using Drivel, a GTK blog client supporting Blogger, Atom, Advogato, LiveJournal and Moveable Type.

Drivel is available for SuSE Linux users as an RPM, Gnome-blog is also but it wouldn't work, and I don't feel like compiling either Gnome-blog or BloGTK from source code.

Oh well

Fixed it myself ...

A reproduction of the original image, made on SuSE/GNUstep, from a cached top_div.gif.

Please don't change things when we're not looking ... many GNUstep developers use blogger.
Half their blogs could look a total mess right now depending on how many style elements have changed without warning :)

Template Header

Now the header's gone. No warning, it's just gone.

The templates are changing. The dashboard as well.

Why is it 80% of the times I'm using a website, that's the time they choose to upgrade it ?

Last winter continual updates and server problems prevented me from being able to continue my work, due to continually borked CVS and SVN servers for Objective-C and other Biotech code.

No one considered the chaos and delays created by not telling anyone before hand.

This went on for several weeks.

When I take down my servers, or reorganise, rewrite and compile the code they run on, I warn people.

Running molecular dynamics simulations and various distributed filesystem/applications servers, I have to.

Now I have to write a template, or create and upload my own header graphic to fill the space left ? I'd rather have the original back.

It is a major reason why I chose the TicTac template to start with, since I'm running SuSE/GNUstep and apart from a CSS style that's a perfect Mac OS X Milk theme, or Openstep/Rhapsody theme ... TicTac was the only one here I like.

Oh well ... yet again I spend a little time on something, and the result is negated.