The World of Fairy Tale by Stephanie Calhoun

The World of Fairy Tale by Stephanie Calhoun
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A wonderful selection of pictures that will bring out your inner child.

View all my reviews

One Pan Potatoes

Now for something truly different here...A recipe! "What? No more rants against MS?" you ask. Well, not today. I have to eat too, and I promised this recipe to a few folks. Time to honor that promise.

A little narrative about where my recipes (this one included) come from. Both of my parents could cook fairly well, meaning my brother and I never went hungry even when we didn't have the "best" ingredients or the fanciest of feasts. My dad tended to cook comfort foods he had grown up with and rarely deviated from the recipes. Mom on the other hand, would get bored with the same recipe and tweek it every time she cooked it. She also tended to look at cookbooks as getting started guides, rarely following the recipe as presented "exactly" the way it said. Neither of my parents really used measuring devices for precise amounts - "that looks about enough..." - which made learning to cook more difficult. Both my brother and I learned to blend our parent's cooking styles into our own style and our styles were completely different from each other.

As I got older, I tended to experiment with foods. I'd see something being made, or taste something new, and I'd think about how I could do it. For better or worse, I'd take my idea and play with it until I had something edible. Just like my mother, I would never force anyone to eat my mistakes - just give it a try, don't eat it if you don't like it, but at least try it.

I also like to camp. As a former Boy Scout and Marine, I know a little something about camping. I also like to eat well when I go camping, which presents all sorts of problems that must be overcome. Anyone can throw a slab of beef onto a grill and call it a steak, but to make a steak dinner takes a bit more thought and planning. What spices are you going to be using? How are you going to cook it (the entire dinner, not just the steak)? All this planning comes into play before you ever leave the house (be prepared!), or you end up doing a "Dinner: Impossible". Not that that is a bad thing, but I like to at least have an idea of what I am making (and the necessary stuff to make it) before I have to start cooking. At the same time, I like to have "options" to deviate from my plan in case I have to (something spoils or I forgot something) or want to (I got an idea, let's try this...). Thus was born "One Pan Potatoes". And now, on to the recipe - makes about 4 servings.

Materials (software)

• 1/4 pound peppered bacon
• 1 tbsp butter or margarine
• 5 medium-sized Yukon gold potatoes
• 1/4 yellow onion chopped
• 1 - 2 cloves garlic minced
• about 3 cups of water
• salt to taste

Materials (hardware)

• a wooden spoon (for stirring things)
• a sharp knife (for cutting things)
• a 3 qt straight-side sauce pan with lid (needs to be big enough to hold everything)

Programming (putting it all together)

Total prep time is about 10 minutes, and cook time is about 20 minutes. Depending on your cooking skills, you can cook and finish the prep at the same time.

Start by chopping the bacon into bits. I like to cut the sliced bacon into 1/4" widths cutting perpendicular to the slices. Cut across all of the bacon slices at the same time, don't worry about separating the bits as they will separate during cooking. This isn't rocket science here. Set aside or start cooking as you will (see cooking instructions below).

Note: If you don't have peppered bacon (bacon with cracked pepper corns), just coarse grind some pepper to add in when you start cooking the bacon. Do by taste, but you probably want about 1 - 2 teaspoons of cracked pepper.

Chop the onion into 1/4" squares and set aside. If you are wondering where the rest of the onion is at, I used another 1/4 for grilling with the meat and saved the other 1/2 for another meal. Mince the garlic and stash it with the onion.

Wash the potatoes and then cut them into about 3/4" - 1" cubes. Leave the skin on! Set aside when done.

Put pan on your camp stove (or home stove, or right on the fire with medium heat). Put in the butter/margarine to melt and drop in the bacon bits. This ups the fat content slightly and helps the bacon render out its fat a bit faster. Stir continuously to cook the bacon crispy, but don't worry about the bacon sticking to the pan. You want it to stick a bit, that brown stuff is going to be needed later. Once the bacon is cooked, scoop out the bacon bits and set aside. Don't dump the grease, don't clean the pan. Just dump the onion and garlic in to sweat until the garlic is browned and the onion is slightly translucent. Now add your bacon and potatoes to the pan and, stirring gently to not break the potatoes, add the water. Once you have the water added, stop stirring and cover. Lower the heat to low to simmer. What is going on here is a steam bath for the potatoes. You will want to stir occasionally (this is where all that brown stuff from cooking the bacon lifts off the bottom of the pan and melds with the potatoes) until the water evaporates and the potatoes are softened but not mush. Salt (and pepper) to taste.

Give the potatoes a final stir before serving to get all the bacon, onion and garlic mixed. Serve hot, and enjoy!

Long time, no type

Wow, has it really been since 2006 since I last put in a post? I'm almost more surprised that there is still a blog here! Thanks to Google for not deleting it. Now to make up for the missing years. Of course, what to write about...

I got a lot of work to do to get this up to date.

The politics of licenses part 1...

This is a bit of a departure from my usual rants against MS Office and extolling the virtues of OpenOffice.org and other open source programs. However, I gotta call stupid acts stupid when and where I see them regardless of who is making them. So we come to the politics of licenses, specifically in open source licenses.

There are already an abundance of open source licenses ("license proliferation") available, that are mostly incompatible with one another and the code sharing they supposedly promote. The FSF (Free Software Foundation) has been busy revamping the GPL into GPLv3 amid much heated discussion between supporters and detractors, that has its own politics and evangelism attached to it. So along come two stories via NewsForge about modified GPLv2 licenses.

The first "Extending the GPL for application service providers" is an attempt to make everyone distribute their modified GPL code, even though the compiled binaries are not being released to the public. This is so total asinine I'm not even sure where to begin to comment on it.

The second story "Open source project adds "no military use" clause to the GPL" is almost worse in its stupidity...No, it is vastly worse. Basically, the program is made available to use for only those that are willing to "fight" for pacifism. No conflict my ass.

to be continued...

The real issues behind MS Office and OpenOffice

Microsoft's Alan Yates would like you to believe that you need the latest MS Office because OpenOffice is (to paraphrase) "where MS Office was 10 years ago". Read his comments here for the full story from IT Wire.
A rebuttal article from OpenOffice user Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, has a headline that says "OpenOffice is ten years behind MS Office? That's just fine!" So is it?

After reading both articles, I really have to agree with Steven. There is nothing new in MS Office that hasn't already been done by any of the competitors, including OpenOffice. Nothing new has been added to the basic word processor in 10 years for a simple reason, there was nothing to add. MS would have you believe that a "new and improved" user interface (UI) is worth spending a few hundred bucks for. My quick looks at the new UI in MS Office 12 (or whatever they want to call it) is nothing more than eye candy that gets in the way of doing what you open Word for in the first place, to write! Imagine that, being able to get to the functions and tools that you need to write whatever document it is you need to write. OpenOffice has that functionality. It is simple and just plain works. MS Office 12 might have that functionality, but why should I spend any extra time to learn a new UI just to do what I could already do in previous versions of MS Office? 'Cause I can look cool doing it? I don't think so.

Are there any compelling reasons for me to pay to upgrade my MS Office XP/2003 installations? So far, the answer is no. I can make Portable Document Format (PDF) files with Acrobat or OpenOffice, or any number of other tools designed to do just that. I can do mail merge, labels, charts, graphs, drawings, newsletters, technical reports, research papers, letters, notes, etc., with OpenOffice and not have to worry about being able to open them again 10 years from now or have my intellectual property (things I have created) come into doubt because of using a proprietary file format. I can even convert my old MS Office files into Open Document Format (ODF) files, although imperfectly at times, shedding another layer of MS dependency and making those same files more accessible in the process. But with OpenOffice, not anything new from MS Office. Hmm...I didn't have to pay anything extra for this either...

Mr. Yates would have you believe that the integration of MS Office with Outlook, Internet Explorer, Exchange, and Windows server is a good thing as well. Why hell, I have OpenOffice, Pegasus (or Thunderbird), Firefox (or Opera), and at least one FreeBSD server somewhere where I can host and exchange my OpenOffice files with my writing/business partners and not have to worry about some new worm or macro virus trashing it all up. Oh yeah, and it doesn't cost me anything for all of that software.

Of course the choice is your's, but it seems pretty clear to me - pay now and pay more later via MS Office upgrade lock hell, or don't pay now and still not be paying later for OpenOffice and other FOSS. My wallet thanks me.

J*

What is IP?

The number of recent Slashdot articles (sorry, no links here, just read /. on a regular basis) on copyright, IP (intellectual property), and open standards got me thinking about what IP really is and how it is being "protected" via the US Patent Office. This just may be a long article, so please bear with me. First off, IANAL (I am not a lawyer)! However, I have enough English smarts to figure out what words mean. I can also look them up in the dictionary if I still need more clarification. So, a couple of definitions via dictionary.com:

intellectual - basically having to do with intellect and intelligence, of the mind, a thought or idea.
property - something owned; a possession
they add:
in·tel·lec·tu·al property

/"in-t&-'lek-ch&-w&l-/
: property that derives from the work of the mind or intellect; specifically : an idea, invention, trade secret, process, program,
data, formula, patent, copyright, or trademark or application, right, or registration relating thereto

Okay, that is all great. So here is the problem. File formats. Specifically, how a program stores the user's data onto some storage medium. Think about what each part of the process is; first is the user's data, second is the process of encoding that data into the file format, third is the process of storing that file to the storage medium, and fourth is the process of retrieving that file from the storage medium. I've simplified it somewhat to keep the discussion on file formats and intellectual property, though we could add in the process (program) used to create the data (what you write into, draw into, etc.). I'll add this into the encoding, storage, and retrieval processes. So let's look at what intellectual property we have going for us.
* the user's data - belongs to the user, is what the user writes, draws, composes, etc.
* the encoding process - belongs to the person, group, company that creates the format for the file and the process of encoding the user's data into that format.
* the storage process - belongs to the person, group, company that created the process of taking a file and storing it to the storage medium.
* the retrieval process - belongs to the person, group, company that created the process of taking a file from the storage medium and providing it to the requesting process.

In really simple terms, the first process is the user, the second process is the program the user is working with, while the third and fourth processes are a part of the operating system. Let's look at this using an example: I am writing a letter or note using a simple text editor and I am going to store it on a floppy disk.

In a perfect world (which is actually almost common now), the process is going to involve a number of open standards: the text encoding (getting the keystrokes into code that the computer can understand) is taken care of by ASCII (or Unicode, etc.), the text editor will store that in a file format that encodes only the keystrokes into a text file, with the storage and retrieval processes using standardized write and read methods built into the operating system. Even though I working with at least four different pieces of intellectual property, the actual data still belongs to me because the intellectual properties I am using are based on open standards. As long as I am using a text editor (any will do) that understand how to read and write basic ASCII text, I can always view and edit my words. Likewise, anyone else that I give the letter or note to can read and edit what I have written as long as they use any text editor that follows the open standards I used to create the file. Cool, right? Except that this isn't a perfect world and here's why in two words, intellectual property.

Intellectual property affects not only what you write, draw, or create, but how you do it. In the FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) world, the means of creation of your work is not subjected to another's intellectual property rights. What you create will still belong to you - the means of creation are usually open standards. In proprietary software, the intellectual property rights exerted on your creation might mean that you give your creation IP rights to the maker of the proprietary software you use to create your work. How dumb is that? Typically, you are at the mercy of the proprietary software maker to continue to support file formats, design tools, etc. for you to be able to retrieve your original work. Worse, in order for others to be able to view your work, they must subject themselves to the will (whims) of the propriety software maker you used to create your work and either purchase the same software, or find some sort of viewer program that can handle the proprietary file format.

Intellectual property laws were created just recently (really, they started to be developed in the 1970s) in the grand scheme of things legal. Supposedly, they were to keep others from taking your idea and moving it to market before you were able to, thus getting the lions share of the money to be made from your idea. This well-meaning legal situation was quickly perverted into something that stifles innovation and rewards the holder of the intellectual property rights (typically, not the person who came up with the idea). In the music and motion picture industries, the artists receive only a few pennies per purchase of their work, while the corporate entity that holds the artist's IP gets the most money per sale. This is being justified by saying the distribution and marketing of the artist's work, as well as for the protection of the artist's IP. Of course, the corporation can pick and choose which artists they want to promote and protect - the bottom line being what the corporate entity thinks is going to make them the most money. Once the artist is "in", that artist has been locked into to a proprietary format that takes more money and lawyers to ever be able to get them out, let alone to be able to get back the rights to their own IP. We are seeing the same thing happening in the software industry - it's called vendor lock in.

Google Values

Since Google has decided to do business in China and follow the Chinese government's rules - namely that certain content searches will be blocked - there seems to be an outcry that "Google has sold out" or "sold their soul". Couple of links to show you the arguments:

Slashdot
The original article from Yahoo's Net Stocks

While this moral high ground is certainly great fodder for picking over, including the idea that Google may not be "doing no evil" by doing business in China under the PRC rules, there is the simple fact that China is allowing Internet access to the world. Yes, it has been filtered to the PRC's standards, but there is still access. If Google and other companies followed the extreme belief that they shouldn't do business in China if they can't do it their own way (no PRC restrictions on content), you have the same results as just taking away all access to the world from China. Imagine that, no Internet outside what is available within the borders of China. Censorship at its best. Instead, Google managed to get some content allowed through to the Chinese people. When you are trying to break down the walls of a repressive government, small steps and little leaks do far more than building another wall beside their's and exclaiming "we will remove our wall when you remove your's". Doesn't that make sense to anyone but me?

J*