Ubuntu

I've been an Ubuntu user on my laptop for a couple of years now. It really is excellent and I never miss having Windows at home for everyday use. It is a shame that more manufacturers do not support it as an option, even if that is just to certify that the hardware will work and the user self installs.
I bought my laptop through Dell when they had an Ubuntu push, I don't think you can do this anymore probably because of lack of demand which is a shame.
I listen to a few podcasts and one of them is centred around Ubuntu and it is interesting to hear of what they are doing. I wonder how Canonical can actually make it a viable commercial option to match the fact that it is a credible Windows replacement.

Book read: Secrets of the Moneylab by Kay-Yut Chen

An interesting economics lab book that comes from experiments run by HP to better understand their consumer business operations.

Dtrace review

I re-watched this review and demonstration of Dtrace by Bryan Cantrill formerly of Sun He gives a very interesting talk, and a demo of tracing a process. Reminded me of just how powerful it is, although the scripting language would have to be mastered. Now the bad side is I've never heard much of ports to Linux, although they do exist it seems - but not as far as a distro with it available as a package. Oracle seem to be trying to introduce it to their repackaged RHEL offering. Cantrill makes some interesting observations about this technology having real use which is undoubtedly true. He then goes on to say Sun is out performing Red Hat - but we all know what eventually happened to Sun.

Book read: Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely

An interesting read about human behaviour, and in particular how behaviour can be subtly changed by seemingly benign conditions and priming factors. The background context of the book is economic behaviour and why we behave certain ways. The ways are deemed "irrational", but the author is trying to show that they are predictably so. There is an awful lot of material covered in this book, almost all backed up by a lab style experiment involving volunteers. The most interesting parts are anchoring of prices by almost subliminal suggestive methods and the anchoring by the concept of "FREE" in marketing campaigns. The experiments are trying to expose and explain the underlying behaviour, there is a sense that modern marketing and advertising knows that the techniques work but Ariely wants to explore why work and provide some deeper understanding. Well worth a read, a book in the same vein as Freakonomics.

Former Apple CEO Obituary

I found this to be a good summary of his life, and a good balance to the "loss of design icon" media mainstream. There was a lot more to Jobs than that, some good and some bad. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/technology-obituaries/8810037/Steve-Jobs-obituary.html I particularly liked reading again of the early Apple days. Clearly not quite as successful as his return to Apple with the iPod/Phone/Pad line of products but still interesting history all the same. It is very sad he died so young - I never quite subscribed to any of the products of the last 10 years, they always felt too closed and a triumph of style over substance. Clearly that is a minority view - they had an almost religious following, another thing that always perhaps made me wary. I'm sure I'd love the iPhone or iPad if I ever decided to get one, but I am pretty sure I never will.