How much of my life's been wasted dealing with problems caused by shared Web hosting hassles? I wish I could put a dollar value on it and collect it from the dozen or so companies that have promised me the world but delivered a minimally functional service that ultimately I cannot use. I'll tell you about some of the hassles I've endured, but if you just want some quick advice, all I can say is this: Never use shared Web hosting for anything remotely important.

Recently a Linux kernel developer tried to relicense an OpenBSD network driver under the GPL, but was caught early in the process and the error was properly addressed with public rebuke. In an unrelated incident, the vice president of the FreeBSD Foundation reiterated in a statement in his August newsletter that open source software as originally and traditionally exemplified through BSD operating systems, and free software as presented by the Free Software Foundation, are not the same thing. Both OpenBSD Project and FreeBSD Foundation representatives separately addressed the same issue: dealing with reality. It's not an issue for BSD people though -- they've been dealing with reality for years. It's really more of a problem for GPL supporters.

Among modern programming languages, Ruby is relatively easy to learn and use. Given that fact, a book designed to introduce Ruby to experienced programmers should be a fairly straightforward endeavor. O'Reilly's Learning Ruby succeeds in this regard, but unfortunately tries to teach people new to programming as well. If you ignore the oversimplified (to the point of inaccurate) explanations of programming theory and just concentrate on translating your current programming knowledge to Ruby, you'll find this book an excellent resource.

I've always resisted the urge to blindly bash Microsoft -- indeed it does make a few really nice products, and has had a positive impact on the computing world in some important ways. I also have to try to maintain a neutral stance on computer products that I intend to review, with the understanding that a product's quality and a company's behavior speak for themselves. Today I'm writing about something that all computer users need to be aware of, and Microsoft's at the forefront of the effort that goes against user interests. Specifically I'm referring to Microsoft's crusade to convince the International Standards Organization (ISO) to adopt its proprietary Office file format as a standard. If Microsoft wins this, we all lose.

Last week Metaweb announced that its open information database, Freebase, had gone into public alpha, meaning you no longer need a registered account to access Freebase. Half the reason I know about this is because I wrote some documentation (it's an O'Reilly Short Cut PDF, but you can download it for free) for Freebase developers a few weeks ago. It's really quite an interesting service -- kind of like Wikipedia, only in the form of a graph database.

For many years I've lamented two fundamental problems with software: that it doesn't have features I really want, and that it doesn't work the way it is supposed to. In other words I'm talking about a lack of appropriate features and a surfeit of bugs. As the era of open source software is slowly ushered in, and the era of proprietary software slowly wanes, I see the two different programming and licensing philosophies more dramatically exhibit these two fundamental problems, each to its own weakness. Neither of these philosophies is ever going to be enough to create truly great software. I wonder what the perfect licensing, distribution, and development model will be, assuming it has not been invented yet.

While researching the details of the new Adobe Creative Suite 3, I discovered an Adobe employee's long list of reasons why CS3 is not 64-bit. Some of them are valid, but when he regurgitated the tired old argument that compiling a program for a 64-bit environment does not make it faster, I had to wonder if he's just making up excuses for code quality problems.