Here’s #2 in my code animal series:

Prototype Sketch of Leopard at keyboard

This one was extremely fun to make. The monkey was fun, but this one was a blast. I learned a lot about Leopards and Jaguars while doing it. It’s a lot more detailed than the monkey as a result, and if I do make this into some sort of Flash cartoon series, or a comic strip, this is the only time I’ll be drawing her this detailed (yeah, it’s a her).

To the keen eye, you can actually tell that this beast is a Jaguar, not a Leopard. Jaguars have a darker orange color, compared to Leopard’s lighter (almost white) coloring. Also, note the pink nose. Leopard’s noses are almost black.

Leopards are from Africa/Asia. Jaguars are from the Americas. But, when you look at their behaviors and coloring, it seems they are basically the same cat, just removed from each other by several centuries.

The reason I am calling this a Leopard instead of a Jaguar (even though Jaguar is an infinitely cooler name, and Leopard reminds people of crApple) is because of the awesome hunting behavior of the Leopard.

Let me digress for a moment. Each of these code animals I am drawing is a metaphor for programmer personalities.

The Code Monkey is a crazy fast, highly caffeinated, crack coder. They get the job done, but good lord is it ugly!

The Code Mole is a highly skilled, appropriately careful, somewhat reclusive, programmer. It refers to books, and other reference material, and stops to survey it’s design for flaws. However, when needed, the Code Mole can tuck it’s head down and dig like crazy to get the code done. How much time the Code Mole has given itself to plan it’s system will directly effect the quality of the result.

The Code Turtle is a Code Mole in the making. However, for whatever reason, the Turtle is tentative and cautious. It can get the job done, and it can even do a great job, but it’s really slow. The Turtle get’s spooked at the first sign of trouble and ducks back in it’s shell to reconsider everything before continuing.

The Code Hawk has a 10,000 foot view of the system. They might have grown up near the code, but now they are very hands off, keeping an eye on everything and constantly evaluating everything. When needed, the Code Hawk will swoop in for a quick kill before immediately resuming it’s lofty heights. (This is obviously a managerial role. Hard to even call it a “Code” Hawk, since even a non-programmer can sometimes assume this role)

This brings us to the Code Leopard, and finally, to the African Leopard’s hunting style. You see, the Leopard is the only large cat to live in trees. The Leopard does everything from the tree. Even hunt. That’s right, some little water buffalo comes walking along and all of the sudden–BAM! The Leopard pownces down on him from out of the tree! Maybe crush the spine, quick skull crushing snap of the jaws, twitch of the head to snap the neck, then the Leopard drags it back up into the tree (keeps away the scavengers). So, the Code Leopard has a bigger view of the code base, but they are still “in it”. This would be more of a debugger, tester, quick-fix type coder. Probably a super-visor, or a team lead/head coder. They know how the whole system works, and when they see a problem that needs knocked out, the jump on it, kill it, and get back up in that tree.

Let me know if you have any other Code Aminal(tm) ideas!

Semi-interesting trivia about the creation of this image: Last Sunday I was watching a PBS special on African cats, which is what generated the idea for the Leopard. I couldn’t remember what kind of cat it was afterwards, only the hollow-spot pattern. When I looked up “Jaguar” on Google, I saw the hollow-spots and assumed that was the right cat. Then, when looking at Jaguar pictures on this page noticed it lived in North America, meaning it could not be my cat…

So I Googled “African Cats” and discovered the cat I was after was, in fact, a Leopard. Thus the name change from “Code Jaguar” to “Code Leopard” (since I referenced the Jaguar picture only to color it in. The sketch and lines I drew from my memory of the PBS special, and looking at it now, I realize it most closely originally resembled the stuffed white tiger my wife used to snuggle with).

While I was Googling cats, I found this (on this page):

Simply spectacular!

First in a series…

When I’m done with the series, I’ll be printing off some fat head stickers to put on my wall at work. 2′x4′, 1″x2″ & 1/2″ x 1″ will probably be the sizes… Let me know if you’re interested in one. If I get enough interest, I might print enough to put some up for sale (not for profit, just enough to cover printing/shipping costs).

Ever wonder what happens to the stuff you throw away? It’s kind of magical isn’t it? You put stuff in this box, it gets taken away to… Well, you really have no idea unless you are able to follow it all the way to the landfill/incinerator without someone noticing (because if they noticed you following, they’d make sure you saw what they wanted you to see). I thought of this story over the last week as I tossed stuff in the trash. Happy reading…

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Another day, another pile of trash.

Ron sifted through the garbage on the table in front of him. He picked out an interesting drawing that had been crumpled up and tossed there. It was a doodle of different bladed implements being “stabbed” into the very paper they were drawn on by disembodied hands. The paper was bleeding. It appeared that at some point the blades had carved “Bad Paper” into the paper.

Classically trained as a Psychologist, Ron found his job pretty stimulating. Sure he was sifting through trash at a “junk mail” company unbeknownst to it’s employees (reporting his psych evaluations to the CEO) but there was something about the detective work he had to do that he found fascinating.

Ever since the “Big Sister” act of 2013, government regulations stated that Ron could not data mine into the employee’s personal files or computers. In 2010 there was a huge lawsuit from a Microsoft employee against his company for wrongful termination over some “Open Source Manifestos” he had written on his work computer over lunch. These had started as rants jotted into legal pads during many of the horribly meaningless meetings he was forced to attend for six hours a day. His boss found the manifestos, and an investigation was started. His “My Documents” folder on his computer was opened and dug through, as well as his drawer in his file cabinet which was marked “Personal”. Microsoft argued that these things were on company property, and therefore belonged to the company.

The courts disagreed. They said Microsoft was behaving in an Orwellian fashion, and that it’s “Big Brother” tactics of invasively scrutinizing employees were illegal. After a three year legal battle, the courts (in a ruling titled the “Big Sister” Act) decided that companies only had rights to access areas explicitly designated as “work” areas on the employee’s computers, and physical files that were not explicitly marked “personal”. When an employee quit, they were allowed to take home any physical files marked “personal” (after they had been combed over by legal to ensure they did not contain any corporate secrets) and the employee’s computer was to be completely “wiped” after the “work” folders were copied to the central server.

Of course Ron’s company had found ways around this. Junk mail was a very competitive business, and Ron’s company wanted to be sure that there was no under-handed activity happening.

According to the law, anything anyone placed in the “trash” became unclaimed public property. This meant that anything an employee threw into their waste basket at work was fair game for corporate scrutiny, and anything they placed into the “Recycling Bin” on their computer was automatically copied to a secret secure numbered directory on the server corresponding with that employee.

Ron’s job initially started as just going through all of this “trash” and making sure the employee was on the “up and up”. Three employees conspiring to quit and take 30% of the clients with them were immediately identified and fired within the first month of Ron joining the company. Funding was added and Ron’s services expanded to psychoanalysis of employees.

Ron could, with alarming accuracy, diagnose employees and identify “leaders” and “losers” within the company. Placing glass ceilings over, or elevators under, “subjects” rather quickly.

No one realized Ron was doing this. Or no one should have. Then Ron discovered that someone did.

A month ago Ron found some alarming threatening letters in a rather annoying girl’s trash. They were written in all CAPS and were just absolutely insane. They talked about how much they hated the CEO, and how they were plotting to kill him. Ron immediately reported his findings, and she was unceremoniously fired for “tardiness and poor teamwork”.

Then this week Ron found what appeared to be correspondence between one co-worker and a competitor. At first Ron was sure they had another breach, except there was something fishy about it. There was no way this employee could ever have known the things they were saying to the competitor. The correspondence was about a top secret company project in another department un-related to the employee’s. The correspondence indicated that the employee was “selling” secrets to the competition, but Ron happened to have a friend working at the competition, and knew they were in no position to buy, or even use these secrets. In fact, the competition was moving away from junk mail entirely, and as of the fourth quarter would drop it all together. The facts just didn’t add up.

Someone was toying with Ron to get people fired. And if they could fake information to get someone fired, this also meant they could groom their own “trash” to get themselves promoted.

A week ago Ron would have begun psycho-analyzing the blades and the “Bad Paper” lettering in the crumpled doodle he held in his hands. He would have decided that this employee was extremely bored and hated meetings. The “doodle” was on the sort of paper that everyone used to take notes during meetings. Ron would have decided that the person was redirecting their anger about the meetings and transferring it to the paper. Punishing the paper by “killing” it and branding it as “bad”. Ron would have passed this information on to the CEO, who then could evaluate the number of meetings and decide if the person was right, and decrease the meetings, or if the person were wrong, and fire them.

Now Ron wasn’t so sure. Could this be another plant? With someone toying with him, all of his trash was now suspect.

The last cell phone I bought was about three years ago. The one I got last October was the “free” phone, and it is a mistake I will never make again.

My wife broke her phone last week, and I spent about an hour in the AT&T store waiting to be helped. I played with the iPhone almost the entire time. When I first saw the display, my only thought was, “Oh yeah… I guess AT&T is the exclusive iPhone service provider… huh…” and then I just moved right on past and started looking at the other phones.

I found the pink Razor my wife wanted (she was sick, and waiting in the car). I waited and waited for a salesman so I could make my purchase. I tried to look at the sweet windows mobile phone my Dad has, but you couldn’t even slide it open to test it out (stupid) and I was shocked to see that it was almost $600. This phone had been the phone I was planning on getting for my Christmas present (Julie and I buy our Christmas presents from each other for ourselves each year), but not with that price tag on it.

Finally, thoroughly bored, and sick of the crappy music some kid had left the iPhone blaring, I went over to the display to try and figure out how to make it shut up. I’m sad to admit it took me a bit (probably 30 seconds) to figure out how to turn off the Macy Gray crap crackling the (what sounded to be blown) speakers. I instantly disliked the UI, but I can’t now remember why. Probably that there were no real menus or anything like that. Oh, and I couldn’t fine the stylus and was disgusted by how nastily smeared up the screen was.

I stopped the music, and then pressed the square button at the bottom thinking that would turn it off, or give me some sort of menu with options (I didn’t care which). It didn’t. I was presented with the home screen. Ok… Hrm… No games… “Text” (boring…) “Calendar” (boring…) “Photos” (who cares, I have a digital camera) “Camera” (couldn’t that have been part of photos?) “YouTube” (really? hrm… intriguing…) *click*

I am presented with a bunch of videos. Cool. That could be entertaining for a while… I’m not really up for watching youtube videos in the middle of a store at the moment though, so I click back on the home button.

“Stocks” (boring) “Maps” (sweet… That could could be helpful) *click*

Google maps pops up and I start playing with it. I’m a sucker for Google maps, and I see that it has the “satellite” view. I start flying around the country looking at things for a few, and then click the home button to see what other treats there might be.

“Weather” (meh… not completely useless) “Clock” (boring…) “Calculator” (always useful) “Notes” (oh… wait… where is the keyboard???) *click*

I pop open the little note pad, and start trying to type in a test sentence with my thumbs. It is extremely awful. Where is the freaking stylus? I horribly misspell every single word as my fat thumbs jab at the tiny little pictures of letters crammed at the bottom of the screen. I somehow managed to type in “Mac sux, and so does this” before I put the phone down completely disgusted, and walked away.

At this point the loud business man with the blue tooth ear piece looking for a blackberry-like cellphone who had been monopolizing the salesman’s time walked over to the iPhone display. He started asking questions about it and tried to type in a note. He started complaining about the keyboard immediately(who wouldn’t?). He then exclaimed, “bah… Too high tech geeky for me! I need something that just works” and walked back over to the blackberry a few phones down. On his way he got a phone call and started talking noisily on his phone.

The salesman rolled his eyes and turned towards me. “I’m sorry, I’ll be with you very shortly.”

He wasn’t helping the guy at the moment, so I asked, “Do you guys have the stylus for the iPhone?”

“Doesn’t come with one. Apple made it to be used only with one index finger, cradling it in your other hand.” (turns out this isn’t entirely true)

“Wow… ok…”

At that point he started helping the guy again, and I wandered a bit more.

Over the next 45 minutes I wandered back to the display again and again. Each time staying a bit longer, and each time I left staying away a little shorter. By the time they got around to helping me, I was sad that I had to pull myself away from the phone.

I began asking questions about the data plan and price, and found that it was shockingly affordable (it was only $50 more than the phone we were buying Julie, and over $200 less than the one I was already looking at for Christmas), and I was happy to hear that it would interact with my home wifi and that I got unlimited data transfer over the phone even when not on wifi. It had a web browser, and it was even an iPod. It was like a little web surfing, music/movie, phone. It was… wait… no… oh the horror… it was awesome!

Saturday afternoon I went back and bought it (very early Christmas present). I went straight home and activated it. I called my brother as soon as it was activated and told him about it. I looked up show-times for a movie. I lay in bed that night watching youTube videos until the battery almost died. I checked my e-mail while furniture shopping the next day. I looked up coupons for the furniture store while looking around. I listened to music while mowing the lawn when I got home. I downloaded the Rush Limbaugh podcast and watched/listened to it while I cooked dinner and cleaned my computer room. I ripped King Kong off of a DVD I had bought and watched it that night while I went to sleep (and then finished it this morning while I went through my morning routine). I used it so much that the battery didn’t get completely charged until Sunday night, and it has run all the way down and back up about five or six times now. I love this little phone.

It has so many features I like that surprised me, and only a few that really pissed me off (no flash??? What the heck were they thinking?). The battery life is lacking (although it charges extremely quickly), and it irritates me that I can’t plug my normal headphones into it (I hate earbuds, and want to use my normal sound-canceling over the ear headphones).

All in all it’s a crazy tight little phone. I guess I will have to admit that I think Mac sucks a little less now…

No, don’t bother looking, you won’t find reasons 1, 2 & 3 on the blog. I haven’t quite decided what they are yet. Something to do with listening to musac in an air conditioned office, getting paid decently to do something I love, and reading/writing in code…

But reason #4 is that I love to make diagrams. Here is my latest masterpiece. I spent the last 3 hours on it, and I actually enjoyed it so much I worked through my lunch.

I did it as part of my documentation process for a website I’m working on, and because I was getting an error with my paypal payment. For some reason the paymentId wasn’t getting inserted into the right table and I couldn’t figure out why. Once I mapped this puppy out I saw it in a heart beat. Somehow I had two identical variables with different names. I instantiated them both to ” ” and then set one to the payment Id, then I inserted the other one into the table. So the payment id dropped off the face of the earth once the page closed, and the table received a blank entry. Oops. That’s what happens when you rename crucial database columns in the middle of dev and forget to propagate the changes to your code fully…

Sometimes programming (and textbooks) makes me laugh (after I finish crying). Especially when I read this line in my SQL textbook:

“Oracle’s query language has structure…but they are basically the normal rules of careful English speech and can be readily understood. SQL…is an astonishingly capable tool…using it does not require an programming experience.”

So, all of you non-programmers out there. It seems then that (according to my textbook) you should all, with extreme clarity and speed, know EXACTLY what this query does:

UPDATE PARTICIPANT
SET renewal_date = (
TO_DATE(
TO_CHAR((
SELECT ADD_MONTHS((
SELECT DECODE(’1′,
(SELECT SIGN((
TO_DATE(TO_CHAR(PARTICIPANT.renewal_date, ‘MM/DD/YYYY’), ‘MM/DD/YYYY’)
) – (
TO_DATE(TO_CHAR(SYSDATE, ‘MM/DD/YYYY’), ‘MM/DD/YYYY’)
)) AS greater_equal_less FROM dual
), PARTICIPANT.renewal_date, SYSDATE
) AS the_date FROM PARTICIPANT WHERE userid = ‘testName’
), 12) AS the_future FROM dual
), ‘MM/DD/YYYY’
), ‘MM/DD/YYYY’)
)
WHERE userid = ‘testName’;

Right? I mean, if SQL is so easy to understand that it’s just like speaking English to the computer, then I don’t even need to tell you what this does, right?

It’s overly optimistic statements in introductions to complex programming language textbooks like that that make middle and upper management who take basic classes believe that programming is “easy” and “quick” and that you should be able to construct the above SQL in about 15 minutes. It took me a little over an hour and a half (with a few breaks). Granted, I have only been using SQL for TWO YEARS so I guess I’m just a noob…

By the way, if someone knows the “right” way to do what I am trying to do above (in oracle) please let me know…

Oh, and all the query does is adds 12 months to the renewal date of a member. If their renewal date is in the past, it just adds 12 months to today’s date.

Object chomperStomper = new FlashGame;
chomperStomper.sourceOpen = true;
chomperStomper.license = “MIT”;
chomperStomper.sourceLocation = “http://www.chomperstomp.com/littleGame.zip“;

chomperStomper.submitToGoogle = true;

And for those of you who don’t read fake Object Oriented Programming Code, I open sourced my chomperstomper game code today under the MIT open source license, and submitted it to google for consideration to be included on their gadgets page.

I think whether or not they include it might have something to do with how many people have added it already, so if you want to, click the link below to add the gadget to your google home page.

Ok, I will openly admit, I have a tendency to have an extremely overactive imagination which, on occasion, will spew forth paranoid delusional theories about every day normal random coincidences.

Today’s conspiracy theory? Microsoft is paid by the “record industry” to play certain songs through windows media player more than others whilst WMP is on “random” mode.

Why did my mind suggest this to me?

Simple. I just bought 7 cds at Half Price Books that I have never owned before, as well as loading 8 (or more) cds into my computer to add to the current 8 gigs of music that I legaly own that I burned off of cds (again, RIAA, pay attention, that I own). lol…

Anyways, so I’ve got right around 10gb of music on my computer. I put EVERY SONG into one playlist, UNRATED. Which means the computer has no idea whatsoever what songs I like better than other songs.

Now, since these are new CDs, there is no way I can know which songs on the cds I like the best having not heard them all. So one would assume that out of the 3gb of music I have just placed on my computer, roughly 2/3 of this music I should have never heard before. So this means that I should only recognize 1 out of every 3 songs, correct? WRONG.

I have been listening ALL MORNING and have only “not recognized” maybe 4 songs (this is probably an over-estimate). Huh? How does that work?

On top of that, the songs I do recognize are (well, were, since it is mostly old music) extremely popular.

What’s going on?

I then notice that all of the songs have “ghost ratings” which means that M$ has taken the average rating from all of it’s users who have this same song and shown it to me in gray. I can then override that rating with my own, which will show up in gold/yellow.

This shows that there is indeed some sort of “internet connection” happening, highlighted by the fact that all of the CD covers/song titles/band names were downloaded for me upon ripping the music.

So, what is going on? Why am I not hearing songs I don’t recognize?

In reality it is probably because I just happen to know a lot more music than I would like to let myself believe, and that I really only wouldn’t recognize about 1/10 or 1/20 of my music rather than the 2/3 I thought.

In overactive imagination land it is probably because M$ is paid by the record industry to (during random playback) ensure that certain artists and songs are played more often than other artists and songs, and that the more “the industry” pays for certain artists/songs the more likely you are to hear that artist/song.

This doesn’t have to be an ongoing thing. M$ could have a price sheet that says “$10,000 to have your song have a 5x play rating, $7,000 for a 4x, $5,000 for a 3x, $3,000 for a 2x, $0 for a 1x”. Then forever and ever your song will have whatever rating you paid for. M$ then plays 5x songs most often, followed by 4x, etc. So that out of 22 songs 7 would be 5x, 5 would be 4x, 4 would be 3x, 3 would be 2x, 2 would be 2x, and 1 would be 1x (or something like that, could be out of 40 or 50).

This is a double edged sword. It is advantagious for the user as well as the CD company. The CD company pays for the invisible star rating, these are normally going to be the “really good” or the “really popular” songs. Then when you load a bunch of music on your computer and play it you are more likely to be happy with what is played, and the “industry” has a small amount of control over which songs you are hearing.

What’s in it for them? Why would they do this? To get you to buy the cd. Let’s face it, there are millions upon millions of GB out there of illegal music. Pretty much every nerd/geek/hacker/computer user I know has at one point downloaded/borrowed/gotten through less than legal means music.

So, if you know that people are out there listening to your music illegally, what would be the smartest thing to do? Make sure they listen to your more than someone else’s. Eventually, chances are, once they have the money, they will buy your crap. There are many many reasons people steal music. I won’t pretend to know what the number 1 reason is, but I would be my collection that somewhere in the top 5 is “I just can’t afford it right now”.

Can you picture some 30 something making 100k a year risking his net worth by downloading illegal music? F-NO. Not if he/she is smart. Especially if they have kids.

So, this means that it’s mostly just a bunch of young kids with nothing to lose really. Ok, so what happens when they grow up, and get something to lose (family, job, house, car, junk)? They start behaving a little better.

So when that happens, if you are the industry, you want to make sure that they keep hearing your music so that at this point they might go “hrm… I have a bunch of illegal music, what happens if RIAA comes after me? I lose… well… everything. So maybe I should clean out my collection and purchase my favorite stuff”. Well, their “favorite stuff” is probably going to be the stuff they heard the most. Which means the stuff with the 5x rating. Which is why “the industry” would pay M$ to play their music more than other people’s music.

Oh, and if you keep hearing Maroon 5 (with a 4x rating), then when they come out with a new CD you are more likely to buy it, which is why Sister Hazel never plays in your playlist, they didn’t pay the piper and now they have a 0x rating where Matchbox 20 has a 3x and plays almost as often as Jack Johnson and Snow Patrol who have a 4x, but not quite as often as Keane’s “Frog Prince” which has a 5x (while the rest of the Keane CD only has a 3x, which is why you don’t hear any of their other songs that much). Get it? Got it. Good.

So yeah, I know all of this is paranoia, but now that I have explored it further… why wouldn’t Microsoft do this? No reason I can think of…

(Note: The image that I based my windows media player montage on is from this site: http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://img.slate.com/media/1/123125/123051/2111767/2121805/050727_mb_Payolacolor_tn.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.slate.com/id/2123483/nav/tap1/&h=150&w=205&sz=16&hl=en&start=8&sig2=f4isglXsxmYhaYdbuRRQhw&um=1&tbnid=5az-XfPvCRbiCM:&tbnh=77&tbnw=105&ei=DJpIRrm4GoTOiQGv663PCA&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dpayola%26svnum%3D10%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN)

Working on a google gadget where you can be chomper (the little guy in the log of chomperstomp.com) and stomp around and do random things.

Right now it’s just a flag and a bug that you drag around to influence his movements. But if you think it’s cute, and want to keep up with my progress, you can add this as a google gadget to your desktop or google homepage. Here is the gadget URL: http://www.chomperstomp.com/chomperStomper.xml

Just put that in the search box in the “add gadget” page for google desktop or enter this in when you click “add gadget by url” for your google homepage.

I just got an e-mail from a friend to the effect of “Ok, I’m ready to try this Linux thing. Any words of wisdom before I give it a whirl? Should I try Ubuntu?”

This is the second person in less than a week to ask me this question (the other person I actually drove to their location to help them burn the .iso and install it. Linux noobs really have no concept of burning an .iso file, and it is something very poorly explained by linux people because they forget about the novelty of the idea soon after their first time of having to do it themselves. I myself made half a dozen “coasters” before I got it right the first time).

So here is my reply to them:

Yes. Ubuntu is the one you want to use if you are ready to with fear and trembling take the plunge into the entrapping freedom of Linux. There is no such thing as a good distribution of Linux for a newbie, but if there were, Ubuntu would be it.

I joke… somewhat. When dealing with Linux, you always have to remember that it’s easy unless it’s hard. There is usually no in-between. Unless it is laughably easy, it will be sobbingly hard.

To be specific:

If the program that you want to install is not in the repository (that’s the thing that comes up when you click “install new program”) you (as a newbie) can safely forget about installing it at all, unless you are ready to spend several hours and lots of online research trying to get it done. If it *is* in the repository, it’s literally only one mouse click away from being fully installed and configured and integrated into your “start” menu. Thus laughably easy, or sobbingly hard. There is no “setup.exe” in the linux world.

Something that is basically required if you want to do anything other than just basic e-mail/word processing/free games is a basic understanding of command line unix. If you know what “ls” “pwd” and “chmod” do, you should be ok. If not, then you should familiarize yourself with them (try typing “basic unix commands” into google). These will be necissary when things get sobbingly hard.

I honestly think that Linux is potentially about a year or two from becoming “mainstream ready” (pessimistically it could be more like 5 to 15). But it is so close! The only thing it doesn’t have that I have become painfully aware of is easy program installations, and clear (self explanitory) file system structure standardizations, like the “Program Files” directory in windows.

However, Dell is soon to start selling their PCs with Ubuntu pre-installed, and I have a good feeling that that is going to really spur people to even more rapidly make Linux “mainstream” ready. Specifically because for the last 15 years (or so) hackers have been working so hard on OS and Linux.

It is their baby. Their baby is finally growing up, and kind of going through puberty in a way. Now is the time when they are really going to (or need to) start whipping it into shape and molding it into the young man/woman it is going to be as an adult. Making it a productive useful member of society. As a child it was really there for it’s parent’s amusement. They showed it off to friends who looked at the prodigy and saw the great potential. It did really specialized things (ran 65% of the internet) and it did them well. Now, as it matures into an adult it is going out into the world and really getting hammered from all sides, soon to be honed into a sharpened well crafted tool. It’s a cold cruel demanding world, and unless Linux learns how to deal with it’s new environment and needs it will be doomed to end up like a social outcast who goes back home to sit in it’s parent’s basement for another 10-15 years until it is really ready, which is what I am afraid is going to happen.