Caliban - Opinion and Righteous Anger

Whilst in the US, I took receipt of the new laptop that I'd had sent to Sarah's folks' address. It's an IBM Thinkpad T60, following on from my last laptop, a T43.

I've been a Thinkpad user for the last seven years now. Before that, I had a Toshiba laptop from the company I was working for at the time. All of these laptops have had in common that they provide a Trackpoint as a pointing device. I tried to get to grips with a Touchpad a few years ago, but just couldn't adjust to it.

So, given my adeptness with the Trackpoint, it was natural to go looking for a machine that had one. I didn't want to have to learn new work practices unless they offered the suggestion of greater productivity (unlikely, since most of my time at the computer is spent thinking what I'm going to do next).

That left me looking at Thinkpads, plus selected models from Toshiba and Sony, since almost no-one else offers machines with Trackpoints. Everyone else offers only a Touchpad.

Try as I might, I couldn't seriously entertain the higher end Sony models that carry a Trackpoint. There's just too much proprietary hardware inside and it's doubtful whether most of it works or will ever work with Linux. I don't like to pay for things I can't use, so that alone was pretty much enough to rule out the Sony as an option. On top of that, however, there's the issue of poor battery performance and the question of machine reliability as a whole.

So, to the Toshibas. What can I say? They just didn't excite me and a friend warned me off them, even though the one I used eight years ago was a good machine. I saw no immediate advantage to them over a Thinkpad and, since I'm less familiar with them, there's the potential for nasty Linux-compatibility surprises.

I was then attracted to the Apple Macbook Pro, because of its beautiful 17" screen. However, some serious shortcomings immediately put me off:

• Very poor battery performance.
• Red-hot running temperature.
• No Trackpoint.
• A single button mouse.
• Not a true PC (for example, no BIOS, so no hibernation mode).
• No PCMCIA slot.

I'm not on the move with my laptop very much these days, so poor battery performance is something I could probably make do with.

Being able to use a laptop on top of my lap, however, is something very important to me. I principally use my laptop on the couch and I don't want to use one of those breakfast-in-bed style tray stands, so a tolerable running temperature is essential to me.

Similarly, the absence of a Trackpoint is almost insurmountable for me, but the one button mouse makes things even worse. Real mice have three buttons: no exceptions. Many X applications work well only with a three button mouse; even a two button mouse with third button emulation is a pain in the arse. A one button mouse means that one has to use keys in combination with mouse clicks to drive applications and what typist wants that? No, in spite of its reputation for having a great user interface, as far as I'm concerned, a Mac is and always has been an ergonomically handicapped machine.

So why consider a Macbook Pro at all?

Well, as I said before, the 17" LCD screen is stunning and I love the MagSafe power connector that jhttp://www.apple.com/macbookpro/design.html just pulls right out of the computer when tugged. That makes it highly babyproof and tripproof. Wrenched power connectors have ruined two otherwise good laptops that I've used in the past.

The fact that Thinkpads are poorly available in this country was probably the major factor in favour of the Macbook. I would have to order the T60 overseas, but I could have the Macbook by walking into a shop and purchasing it over the counter.

And so it came to pass that I actually did visit the Apple shop with a view to purchasing a 17" Macbook Pro. I had almost convinced myself I could learn to live with its many shortcomings, that I would learn new working habits and even purchase a lap stand in order to not bake my balls.

But in the end, as I was standing there in the shop, eyeing the thing, I just couldn't help but think to myself, 'What a pile of overpriced rubbish. What am I doing?' I just knew it wasn't the right decision and certainly not for that amount of money.

So, I biked home and ordered a T60 on-line a couple of days later, a considerably superior machine for around €400 less. Granted, it doesn't have the 17" screen, but the extra two inches just don't matter to me; not when you weigh up all of the other sacrifices I'd be making to get them.

I installed the system whilst in Providence and now have a dual-boot Fedora Core 5/Windows XP system. I didn't want to bugger around with fiddly Linux tools for the partitioning (for one thing, the copy of XP that comes with the laptop has no installation media -- the installation files are in their own partition on the hard drive, so a slip-up can be fatal), so I went against the grain and purchased Acronis' Disk Director Suite for Windows XP by electronic download. It's actually a very nice piece of software. I had tried the free trial version first, but it wouldn't commit the changes I had made, so I was forced to purchase it.

The machine I've bought has a scaleable 2.33 Ghz Core Duo T2700 CPU, 100 Gb 7200 RPM SATA-150 hard drive, built-in 802.11a/b/g WiFi card, a DVD-RW drive, 2 Gb RAM and a 9 cell battery. Those are the configurable options that can be purchased to suit one's own needs. Non-configurable options include Bluetooth, a fingerprint scanner, ATI Radeon X1400 graphics, Analog Devices sound and Intel gigabit Ethernet.

Most importantly, there's a Trackpoint, but even the Touchpad is useful, as the Synaptics driver allows circular-scrolling, which is even better than Apple's two-finger scroll.

Most things were easy to get working and are supported directly by FC5. Ease of configuration was greatly helped by Joshua David Starmer's excellent T60 installation guide and the equally excellent ThinkWiki wiki.

Components that needed some effort were:

• Hardware accelleration of the ATI Radeon graphics chip.
• The ipw3945 802.11a/b/g card.
• The fingerprint scanner.

Of all of those, the fingerprint scanner was the only truly awkward thing to get running properly.

To get this device working at all, one must install UPEK's TouchChip TFM/ESS FingerPrint BSP (Biometric Service Provider). One also needs the BioAPI libraries, plus pam-bioapi in order to interface with PAM, Linux's authentication framework. These latter two packages appear to be poorly if at all maintained at the moment.

Anyway, once all of those are compiled and installed, one can mess around with the PAM configuration files and require use of the fingerprint scanner for authentication. I soon had su and sudo working, plus gdm for logging in to X. Log-in at a virtual console also works as expected and the net result is quite impressive when you're not used to it.

gnome-screensaver was another matter, however. The fact it doesn't run as root is problematic, so I had to download a newer version with code to work around the issue (at least 2.15.3), sort out the dependencies and compile it. That eventually worked, but then I noticed that gnome-screensaver would no longer scan fingerprints after the laptop had resumed from a suspension. To fix that, I found I needed to add the following udev rule:

BUS=="usb", DRIVER=="usb", SYSFS{product}=="Biometric Coprocessor", GROUP="bioapi", SYMLINK="misc/fingerprint", RUN+="/bin/sh -c 'chown ianmacd /proc/$RESULT /dev/$RESULT'"

This ensures that ownership of the USB device corresponding with the fingerprint scanner is always set to me. It's a hack, because it works only for the user ianmacd (me), but since I'm the only user of this system, I can live with a non-universal solution. Now gnome-screensaver consistently works, save for a minor display issue that I can't get too worked up about.

I'm exceptionally happy with this new laptop and expect years of faithful service from it. I just wish Thinkpads were essier to obtain in this country. They do exist, but the dealers have a very poor selection and the prices are just plain silly. Luckily for me, I had a trip to the US coming up, so I was able to order one ahead of time and pick it up when I got there.

It's been quite long time since I blogged about anything. There's no particular reason for that, really. I've just not felt like blogging whenever I've considered doing so.

Nevertheless, an update seemed in order, so here goes.

The recent family trip to see oma and opa went well. Sarah was in Providence quite a bit longer than I was; I basically showed up, hung out for a couple of days and then Fenella (my step-sister) and her family showed up. We drove up to rural Maine the next day and spent five days on what I thought would be a llama farm, where we would supposedly do some llama trekking.

Well, there were llamas there, but they never left their pen. What we spent most of our time doing was taking out huskie teams for training runs, which involved hooked up six to twelve animal dog teams to the front of ATVs and then racing off down the unpaved roads around the farm, keeping the reins just taught enough that the dogs are pulling for all they're worth, without running them into the ground.

When we weren't racing the dogs, we were playing with puppies, hiking in the surrounding countryside or eating hearty, organic meals back at the farm's lodge. The food was stupendous; in fact, the whole experience was very memorable and made a big impression on all of us.

The Telemark Inn farm is out in the middle of nowhere. Our mobile phones all gave up the ghost about an hour before we arrived, so that should give you an idea of how rural that part of Maine is. The wilderness lodge, as it's called, is on the edge of the White Mountain National Forest. The nearest town is Bethel. The only electricity comes from a generator on-site.

How nice it was to divorce ourselves from our technology-dominated lives and get out into nature for several days. This is not a trip I would ever have picked out to make, so my thanks go to Fenella for discovering it and recognising its potential. It didn't take long before all of the adults were pondering the wisdom of their daily lives, when one could be living in the wide open spaces of the countryside, truly rural countryside. Still, if one thing became clear during our time on the farm, it's that it takes an inordinate amount of work to run a place like that. The people who run it are extremely dedicated souls.

Speaking of which, I must thank Steve and Leo for allowing us to share their lives for the better part of a week. Steve's quite a character, and regaled us with many captivating tales of his past and what it's like to run a huskie farm in rural Maine.

Leo, Steve's girlfriend, is the cornerstone of the farm, tending the horses and llamas, running the huskies, feeding all of the animals, doing groceries and somehow still finding the time to prepare an endless array of tasty organic meals. She grew up in New Mexico and the influence is clear in her delicious cooking. I haven't eaten that well since I left Google (and I'm not joking).

After Maine, it was back to Providence for a couple of days; unseasonably warm days, as it turned out. I took receipt of my new T60 laptop and proceeded to install it.

Back in The Netherlands, it was raining. Well, it would be, wouldn't it? Autumn has arrived.

There's not a lot else to tell, to be honest.

We built our first fire in our living-room fireplace this evening. We'd bought some logs and a fire-screen earlier in the day. It's quite remarkable how cosy this made our home feel. I'm going to get some more logs next week and build lots of fires for our upcoming series of guests.

Roman and Carine (and Elina and newborn Rachel) arrive on Wednesday from Zürich. Sarah and I are both really looking forward to spending time together with them.

A few days later, Geoff arrives with his new wife (actually, they arrive separately from different countries, but the story's too long to tell). He was going to be attending a wedding in Hamburg, but somehow his acceptance of the invitation wasn't acknowledged, so now he's coming to visit us and go on a belated honeymoon.

Another old Google colleague, Brian, turns up on Tuesday for the annual Amsterdam burger. Believe it or not, this is the second time that he has flown from San Francisco for the sole purpose of sharing a hamburger with Geoff and me. Geoff, too, must be lauded for his dedicattion to our old traditions. It won't be a legendary Clarke's Burger, but the company is more important than the food.

It will be great to see old friends again. Apart from that, it's business as usual: getting work done on the house and finding odds and sods with which to furnish it.

My feet are itchy, though. The urge to travel again is becoming ever stronger and I think we're going to have to do another trip in the near future. Scandinavia beckons, but I'd also like to get back to Iceland again some time this winter. Well, we'll have to see what happens. We still don't even have the photos from our last trip on-line yet.

In a new report published by the press organisation, [Reporters Without Borders], The Netherlands has managed to achieve equal first ranking on the list of countries with the greatest press freedom. It shares the top spot with fellow Europeans, Finland, Ireland and Iceland.

This is especially encouraging, given the current political climate sweeping the globe, which threatens personal freedom and privacy on many levels, not least of which the ability of the press to go about their business unmolested.

A free press is something that ought to be able to be taken for granted, especially in countries that make a very vocal point of proclaiming freedom as their very raison d'être. How does the freer-than-thou US fare in this report? It comes in a depressing, yet not altogether surprising equal 53rd, alongside Croatia, Tonga and Botswana. Even Chile and Israel score better. Dude!

The US's great ally, the UK, another chest-beating, rabble-rousing champion of liberty, manages a slightly better 27th place. By Jove, surely not?

My conclusion: just as countries with the word 'Democratic' in their official name seldom actually are, so, too, should nations that harp on incessantly about freedom be mistrusted. Those countries that actually do offer their citizens a semblance of liberty generally seem to get on with it in silence. Perhaps that's because only illusions need reinforcement.

Forgive me if I sound a little smug. I'm not; I assure you. There is much for me to be concerned about, but, for one brief moment, there is also something to actually smile about.