8:00 PM I'm baaaaack...

Actually, I was back yesterday, sort of. My flight Sunday night was delayed, so I missed my connecting flight in Las Vegas. America West very nicely gave me a voucher for a hotel - just far enough from the airport that it wasn't worth the trip. <sarcasm>Fortunately, the floor of the Las Vegas airport is comfortable.</sarcasm>

So I got home yesterday about 8 AM. Took a shower, changed clothes, ate something I think, slept for an hour, and went to work, not that I was good for much. Went home and zonked out, then spent today playing catchup. And, as you can see, I am now down the list to this post. Yay!

The trip was otherwise a success; Seattle is much as I remember, comfortable, cloudy (a good thing, btw) and not very crowded. Yet, unfortunately, but anyway...

Siebel's Bellevue office is located in One Bellevue Center, pictured here. On the 22nd floor, the top floor. Nice place, with one problem - big plans, no IT staff.

Well, now they do. They've decided that they like me, apparently; big raise, relocation, more stock, all in high enough quantities that I'm not looking for another job any more. Whoohoo!

Other than that... well, I arrived Wednesday night and picked up my rental car (a green Taurus wagon; interesting car, really) spent Thursday at the Bellevue office. Friday was spent doing nothing much with my in-laws. Saturday we drove all around the Seattle area, looking for areas we'd like to live, and just sightseeing a bit. Sunday we went to the Northwest Children's Theater performace of Guys and Dolls - excellent, btw, with assistance in the pit orchestra by Keri's cousins Chris on trumpet and Marie on flute. Then out to dinner with the whole "Keri-clan", and it was time to head back to the airport.

Keri got some good pictures with her dad's digital camera, but I'll let her post them; they're her pictures, after all.

As for here; well, amazingly enough, the office did not fall apart while I was gone, although there were apparently some bets about that. In any event, I'm still exhausted, and beginning to ramble; here's hoping for coherency in the morning. Later, all.

9:00 PM Hey everybody. I wrote part of this yesterday, but technology problems have gotten in the way. More on that below....

First, welcome back to the Warlock. In fine style, I see. His arguments on the trouble with the Open Source movement are much the way I have been thinking myself. And while we're on the topic of the Open Source Movement, there's a new book out (just reviewed today on SlashDot) entitled "Free For All" - a book intended to discuss the "history" of the Open Source Movement and how, in the words of the reviewer, the Open Source Movement took over.

Ahem.

Completely ignoring for the moment the question of whether or not the Open Source Movement has "taken over", WHAT history? RMS didn't write the GNU Manifesto until 1984. Linux wasn't released, even as a .1 version, until the 90s. These events are not yet history, people. You can not study an event as history until everyone with a vested interest in the conclusion is no longer "on the scene", be they dead, out of power, or forgotten. The rule of thumb is 50 years, and we are a long way from that.

The idea is that you can't accurately describe something that you can see without the proper distance between the object and your eyes. Suppose I ask you for an accurate, detailed description of your right hand. Pretend, first, that you've never seen it before. Next, open your hand, and rest the palm of your hand on the edge of your nose, no more that an inch from your eyes. All you can see is a few square inches of the palm of your hand; you can't see the fingers, the back, or the wrist. You have to back off a bit, hold your hand out in front of you, so that you can see the whole thing. THEN you can accurately describe it. Events work the same way. You can't accurately assess events until you have enough distance to gain perspective.

To give an example from history, I learned the history of World War I twice; once, along with every other American schoolkid, and once in Modern European History class for the International Baccalaureate program in high school. The first class was the standard American perspective, using the standard Houghton-Mifflin text; the second was in the European style, working from various sources, as many as possible being reproductions of documents and letters, plus news reports, etc. The other difference was that the American version has been taught more or less the same since 1920; Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was assassinated in the Balkans, touching off a war of retribution that grew to include all of Europe. This is what all American children are taught; my younger brother was taught this same story in school this year.

The European version, which did not begin to examine World War I until about 1970, tells a different story; the Archduke was a waste of space, so universally disliked that his family ignored the funeral. Aside from the unrest in the Balkans, things were, albeit not peaceful, they were cooling off; then someone (exactly who is still a matter of debate) engaged in a war of aggression against their neighbors. No one really seemed disinclined to prevent it; there had been so many military advances in the years since the last major war (the Franco-Prussian, if I recall correctly, for Europe; the Spanish-American War for the US) that everyone firmly believed the war would be short and victorious. Both sides were wrong on the first part, and even the Allies might be counted as defeated; their only accomplishment was 20 years of depression (masked in the early years by a high fever) followed by a war to make the "Great War" seem like a fistfight between schoolboys.

The point is that there are two completely different, irreconcilable differences between the two versions. They can't both be correct. One was developed and written while the people who'd MADE the mistakes were still there and in power; the second didn't begin until well after the entire situation was over and nearly out of living memory. Which one is more likely to be correct?

That ignores the whole "Open Source has won" idea, but we'll discuss that later. When I'm done laughing.

While we're pissing people off... <G>

Keri's mother Marlaina is, as has been mentioned, blind. She is also an advocate of the ADA, and works for various web sites and companies to make their sites - physical and virtual - accessable. Marlaina, if you're reading this, I love you as much as any man loves his mother-in-law - but you're wrong. Not in the goal, but in the methods.

The ADA and similar "leveling the playing field" laws are taking the wrong approach. They see the problem from the standpoint of "it's not fair to force a segment of the population to accept disadvantages caused by physical disability". For example, persons forced to use wheelchairs - like Keri's father Gary - are completely blocked blocked from buildings with stairs, but no ramps or escalators.

And they're right, that is unfair. The problem is that the majority of the people do NOT need these aids. In the case of businesses, you are forcing them to make expensive changes in order to accomodate what is, in most cases, a very small segment of their customer base - and like it or not, businesses must make decisions based on pleasing as many of their customers as possible. Not everyone - that's impossible. But the largest block of them possible.

Plus, many of the accessable changes are more inconvenient for other customers. One example that springs to mind is counter height; wheelchair users essentially spending their lives in a chair, normal height counters are uncomfortably high for them to work at. So lowering the counter places it at a convenient height for the wheelchair-bound. This makes it uncomfortably low for those not confined to a wheelchair - and impossible for those elderly and infirm who are not confined to a wheelchair, but are required to use such devices as walkers and assisted-lift chairs.

So what is the solution?

I believe that the accessability products on the market are taking the wrong approach. Wheelchairs are comfortable, but they do not replace the legs; they provide a rough, crude approximation that requires major changes to the person's home, special accomodations for work, travel, dining, etc. For every aspect of life. The ideal, of course, would be to replace legs with legs - through transplantation, cloning, perfect mechanical replacement, whatever. That may be theoretically possible, but it's not doable right now. So the next best thing is a wheelchair that DOES replace legs; gives the user the ability to climb stairs, places them at normal standing height, allows them to navigate at a minimum the average terrain that a walking person faces. That's already being done - a six-wheeled powered chair that does all of those things, and more; the inventor climbed from the Paris metro to the top of the Eiffel Tower in one, specifically to prove that it COULD do those things. The design goal is to allow a person to live in a house without modifications, to work in the exact same desk and office anyone else does.

Why are we not striving to do this for OTHER disabilities? Why are we spending money retrofitting buildings and forcing businesses to spend more than they can afford, rather than working on technologies to allow anyone to have the same capabilities regardless of disability.

Anyway. The reason this wasn't posted yesterday is that I will shortly have a new toy. You see, my laptop is dying, a rather rapid, painful death, and I'm trying to keep it together on life support until my shiny new IBM ThinkPad T20 arrives - hopefully tomorrow. And since this doubled-day post is already way too long, I will wait to discuss that until I can talk about the new laptop in less general terms. Later, all.