Warpstock 2012, Portland Oregon, USA
Well, after another round of considerations and deliberations, the Warpstock Board of Directors finally decided upon the Embassy Suites, Portland Airport for the site of this year's OS/2 & eComStation conference, August 17-19.
Full details are available on the Warpstock site, but meanwhile, here are a couple of highlights:
Why I still use OS/2 (eComStation)
As a consultant, I look at computers and operating systems from a "best tool for the job" perspective. Some systems are better suited to some things than others. I wouldn't expect to play modern computer games, written for Win32 or Win64 on Linux or OS/2, no matter how far advanced Wine or Odin was/were. Likewise, I wouldn't consider running a web server on the Win32 or Win64 platform vs Linux or OS/2.
Along with other suitability considerations, I factor in my own (or the client's own) comfortability factor with a particular environment. The Mac object oriented desktop is quite nice, though it's not my environment of choice. On Linux, I prefer KDE to Gnome, but neither of those nor the Mac desktop nor Windows Explorer approaches the level of comfort, familiarity, or ease-of-use which I experience using the Workplace Shell, which is - for me, at least - the main reason I stick with eCS.
Stability concerns? These affect all platforms at one time or another. Unless the problems are inherent to the overall system design (Windows' weak security model and the dangers of the single registry paradigm), such things need to be considered in the course of business. that is to say, they happen. Cars break down, too, but I'm not quite ready to go back to a horse and cart (and carts break - ever change a wagon wheel?).
On the ungrateful nature of users and the OSS development community
Nothing new, here, I'm afraid. It's a problem as old as the concept of "free stuff."
So what exactly is free stuff, anyway, and why do people seem to equate freely available to freedom from cost?
Recently, a contemporary of mine posited the idea that as the majority of Linux apps ported to eCS were built using GCC, they were somehow unstable, inferior, untested, or otherwise unworthy of use, and further, that developers porting these apps either did not care to - or simply did not - test them before releasing them on an unsuspecting public. This summoned the ire of one of the OS/2 community's most prolific - and talented, and approachable - porters, who reiterated what so many of us have said to and about this individual for some time: "There's the door."
Configuring Squid Proxy on OS/2: Path adjustments
Following onto my post concerning web privacy, I wanted to produce some pointers concerning Squid configuration for web blocking. To do that, of course, I needed a working Squid configuration. Mine was sorely in need of an update. I'd been running 2.6 stable 14(?) for a long time, then upgraded to 3.0 stable 13. I recall that took me some time to get working, but still I suffered repeated crashes under heavy load, so as a result, I did what any other normal user would do: I turned it off.
Well, that's no solution, now is it? It's especially no solution if the goal is to be able to tell other people how to use it!
CRTs vs LCDs in 2011/2012
An interesting thread cropped up on the eComStation Technical mailing list on Yahoo! in the past few days. One of our list members was inquiring about the ability to set refresh rates in the Panorama video driver. Short answer: you can't (well, at least, not yet). This is covered in the VESA FAQ. Apparently, the original poster has a CRT which requires proper tuning of the driver for his monitor's refresh rate. One of the first responses to come back to him (aside from the correct answer, pointing him to the FAQ) was the obvious question: "Why are you still using a CRT?"
I suppose what has amused me the most about this little exchange was the assumption that by now, CRTs have become yester-tech, and that *all* truly modern systems (this was a fresh install of eComStation 2.1) should be outfitted with LCD monitors.
I was going to jump into the post, but instead, I'll just migrate some excerpts here, and include my own commentary at the end.
Warpstock 2011: Prepping for the event, dinner, and more
A busy pre-event day.
The hotel Wi-Fi (DoubleTree Suites Raleigh-Duram) seems adequate. The service is apparently provided via Wayport, and we have an event promotional code which gets us free access. Authentication is via captive portal, and there appears to be enough signal to saturate most areas of the building without dropouts. We tested a Skype connection with video (yes, in order to run Skype, I had to reboot to Windows...probably the sixth time this year my T43 booted into XP), and all went fairly well.
Lunch in the restaurant was quite good, and the portions were quite generous. Pricing was fair, too.
More arrivals in the afternoon, and of course, the requisite (for me) administrative tasks to perform, as Treasurer of Warpstock Corp. Surely, less hassle than I've had in the past, and all things considered, easily accomplished. I found some time later in the day to retire to the library (yes, the hotel has a quiet reading room) to work on my presentation for Saturday, on WPA & WPA2 connections using XWLAN and the WPA Supplicant (the difference is between the two implementations, the 4-way handshake, RC4 vs CCMP/AES, and what the various debug screens look like from the supplicant). I set up a refurbed Cisco E2000 router and got several good screen shots of various types of behavior.
Dinner was excellent. We had NC BBQ for the buffet fare, and there was more than enough to go around. Some late-comers missed dinner, unfortunately. I was even able to get crowd favorite Steven Levine to say a few words about eCS 2.1, and give a preview of some of his talk slated for Sunday. This, of course, led to a Q&A session which ran longer than our allotted time for the room, yet the staff was courteous and allowed us to continue, never once suggesting that we wrap up and skidaddle.
We had our Board meeting in John Edwards' suite, which was my first opportunity to see the accommodations, which were roomy and comfortable. As I'd already registered the couple walk-ins, we were all heartened that attendance may even be better than expected. A good meeting, indeed.
On my way out, I got snagged to look at a network connection which wasn't cooperating. After advising my friend that he needed to give up on the wired connection and switch to Wi-Fi, I had to debug his somewhat mangled PROTOCOL.INI which was keeping his GenMAC driver from loading and activating his Intel card. More conversation followed, and I finally got out about 1am.
Looking forward to Saturday's sessions.
Warpstock 2011: Before the fun
Just arrived at my buddy's house in Cary, NC this evening. The official kickoff for Warpstock 2011 in Duram is tomorrow evening, but there's still much to do to get ready, so tomorrow morning, we get to check out the quality of a Skype video session on the hotel Wi-Fi.
I'll follow up with a full report on that tomorrow, as well as some thoughts of mine concerning Skype, in general, from a security perspective as well as the concept of convergence.
WPS Class List
XWorkplace is a marvelous piece of software. Like so many things related to the Workplace Shell (WPS), there are continually new things I discover about it.
I had occasion recently to post a note on the Xworkplace-user list concerning some odd class definitions for .ps files which I noted upon enabling Turbo Folders (though the classes were definitely there prior to that), specifically, LAN Server Class. I would have expected something like WPDataFile or XfldDataFile.
Paul Ratcliffe, the current maintainer, pointed me to the WPS Class List object. I'd never explored that before, and it was like finding a hidden chapter in an old familiar book: something new about something so well known. It was quite revealing.
For those of you who are not familiar with eComStation, the current commercial version of OS/2, I suggest you have a look here.