All the references to the proposed June 28 referendum that led to Zelaya’s removal from office have been modified to read “non-binding referendum”. This is very misleading. I’d like to edit this article, and I need a better way to describe the referendum, that is true and, most importantly, demonstrably true.

Could you help me read the Wikipedia articles and register as editors to provide verifiable information presenting the true side of the issues surrounding it? Please be careful not to inject your point of view into the articles, and to add only information that can be proven, by published sources, not editorials or opinions.

Articles that need attention are:

• The Honduras article
• The 2009 constitutional crisis article
• Roberto Micheletti’s biography
• Manuel Zelaya’s biography

Although it looks like a Google bomb, currently, if you type “Microsoft is…” into the Google search box, the top result is a gleeful April 2007 article by Paul Graham: “Microsoft is Dead”

My reason for discovering this amusing fluke is a recent warped decision by the Seattle software company to hire a former Yahoo! executive to manage their search and online ads. How desperate can you be when you hire someone from a struggling company to save yours? So I googled it and…khazam: there it was! (see image above)

Major software companies like IBM, SAP and Microsoft slowly stifled developers like me in the past decade. Fresh out of college I saw writing software in much the same way as I saw writing literature: creative, exciting and limitless. The business world smacked that idea out of my throbbing head. Businesses are not interested in creative writing of anything; does it sell?

Microsoft’s main competitors, Google, Apple and the Open Source movement answer: “Yes.” It is their spark of youthful creativity is gnawing away at the Microsoft/Intel cartel. That spark is my hope for a more spiritually satisfying career. Hopefully it will also pay the bills.

There are Microsoft daemons lurking in the background of a friend’s MacBook Pro. Could it be the reason his keyboard and trackpad suddenly stopped working?

Some twisted Unix system programmer decided to call background services daemons; the name stuck, and spread to Linux and Mac OS X, which are Unix-based . But nowhere is the name so well applied as with background Windows “services”: they chain any computer’s performance to the ground, and suck the life out of any poor foolish soul that merely wants to use their computer.

This is one of the most cryptic and meaningless error messages I’ve had the misfortune to receive in all my years as a software developer:

“The current application program detected a situation which really should not occur. Therefore, a termination with a short dump was triggered on purpose by the key word MESSAGE (type X).

Alice is a tool for creating virtual worlds, that teaches its users how to program, by creating an attractive visual metaphor for the building blocks of structured programming: sequence, choice, and repetition. It is impossible to make a syntax error with the software, as almost everything is drag-and-drop. Its purpose, to teach computer programming to a generation growing increasingly averse to studying computer science, especially women.

Computer Science is usually grouped with mathematics in college, and both suffer from a tremendous gender gap. In my four years of college I didn’t have a single woman teacher, except in history, literature and political science. Most of my classmates were guys, and some needed to shower more often. Of the six women studying computer science with me, two were Russian, one was from El Salvador, and only two were from the US. The disparity has gotten worse since then, together with a general distaste for math-laden careers.

Enter Alice into the picture. Created by Carnegie Mellon researchers, the late Randy Pausch among them, their studies have shown that average grades among the at-risk students improved from “C”s to “B”s, and retention increased from 44% to 88% when using Alice. Hopefully more high schools and universities will use Alice or similar programs to teach introductory programming

Microsoft usually drags its feet in the browser arena, and this time it could cost them. Internet Explorer is usually years behind its peers in performance and features. Opera and Firefox boasted tabbed browsing much before IE7, and IE8 is bringing and ad blocking feature that has been available in Firefox several versions ago.

Microsoft’s monopoly in the OS market gives it no motivation to excel in the browser wars, because it has an absolute advantage no competitor could even get close to. Even Apple used Internet Explorer for Mac as its default browser for five years. But the prevalence of the internet has proved baffling to the OS behemoth. Google’s tremendous success, and the departure of key Microsoft employees to it, has made CEO Steve Ballmer famously throw a chair and vow to “kill Google”.

How would Microsoft kill Google? By blocking its ads. Online text ads are Google’s major source of revenue. Ad blocking is one of the most touted of yet-to-be-released IE8’s features. Coincidence?

But Google was probably expecting that…and is preemptively releasing its own browser today, Google Chrome, with many innovative features, before IE8 is officially released. Google just might have a chance.

I can’t wait to try it out! Google has described Chrome’s inner workings in this web comic. Unfortunately, Chrome will not be available to download until after Google’s press conference at 11am, Pacific time.

One of its key features reveals Google’s open secret to replace Microsoft’s Windows with a “Google Operating System“. Each browser tab runs in a separate process, with its own memory space (called a heap) and objects (called a stack). No process can read or write from the other processes. If one process fails, it is deleted, and it’s memory is reallocated, but the system remains stable. This is exactly the way operating systems run programs. Chrome even has its own task manager, just like an operating system. Please get the chairs out of Mr. Ballmer’s way!

Its other impressive features are a Javascript virtual machine (called V8) which promises to make web apps run much faster, and blacklists to protect web users from phishing and malware.

The most promising thing about this browser, and probably the most irksome to Microsoft, is that the entire code is open source. This means any developer can see its inner workings, and tailor software to run efficiently on it, or improve on what Google has done. In fact Chrome is indebted to open source code from Mozilla Firefox and Apple’s Web Kit.

Open source software has created an environment where creativity and innovation are thriving. This freedom has the tendency to promote standards and consensus among developers. Even if Chrome never becomes the dominant browser, the “browser-as-an-OS” approach will influence other browsers and weaken Microsoft’s stranglehold…not on the internet, but on operating systems.

I’ve said this before, Google how do I love thee! Let me count the ways.

Image by Eszter Hargittai, used with a Creative Commons license. P.S. This is a Google employee’s car, not hers.

Google has anounced a new product named “Lively“, a 3D chatroom many have likened to Second Life. Three-D chatrooms have been around for a while, and while Second Life has become inmensely popular, how is Lively different?

Apparently Google wants to leverage it’s enormous user base and the ability to embed these chatrooms in webpages. The difference is that if enough people get a “Lively” avatar, they’ll be able to interact accross many web pages with a single user account.

The main problem is reaching a critical mass. On the plus side, furniture and accessories are free, and look pretty good. Also, creating a virtual world is addictive and fun for many (ask my Sims-addicted nephews and neices). A local installation is also necessary, WHY?

I doubt this will take off any time soon, but feel free to wander in the virtual Pensieve café. Capuccinnos are on the house.

It seems I’m always in the middle of a system upgrade these days. It comes, I guess with my struggle against being a thrall of the Microsoft empire. I’ve been fighting the need to install Windows XP again on my laptop for months.

I only need Windows for two things: Making music, and playing games. Windows XP is still unbeatable in these two respects, unfortunately.

After sighing a lot, and finally making up my mind, I created a partition on my hard drive for my installation. Problem is, the Windows setup program would not recognize my drive at all. I thought this was because I had other partitions on the same drive, with Linux on them. So I decided to delete all my partitions (and my beloved Linux) and start from scratch.

So I did. Guess what? The setup program STILL wouldn’t recognize the disk. Agony. Weeping. Gnashing of teeth. I took my machine to a store (Caribe Comp) to upgrade its RAM memory, and the technician took it apart so he could see what kind of memory I needed to buy. I asked him about my plight; lo and behold, he had the answer! My hard drive was SATA, and I needed to uncheck an option in its BIOS (forgive the tech speak). So I did.

TA-DA! I’m now blogging from my shiny new Windows (guiltiness aside).

Linux is acting surly and resentful now, after I reinstalled it. It’s not running my favorite program, Compiz Fusion, and is in general being a nuisance. Come on Linux, acting jealous will only drive me away from you!

Image by Andrew Hoyer; used with a Creative Commons license

According to Computer World the “One Laptop Per Child” project (OLPC) is experimenting with an ancient power source, know to have been used before recorded history began: the friendly neighborhood cow.

Their current design creates current using a dynamo from a Fiat engine, and what looks like a modified bicycle with a crank. I hope the methane emissions and biological waste don’t become a problem.

OLPC’s XO laptop uses Linux software, which has made Microsoft scramble to create a low-power and low-cost version of Windows, to prevent millions of poor people from becoming more familiar with a rival operating system. Down with the Borg! Booo, … or should I say, Moooo!

Image by Philippe Tarbouriech, used under a Creative Commons license