Andy's Mind

Groove is just another example of what, I think, are signs of IT (or computer industry) maturing and inevitably becoming commonplace. Those signs are stuff that just works without people generally knowing – or caring – how. Another is Skype.

Skype is arguably worse at its core functionality (carrying voice over the network) than other protocols – and the protocol itself is proprietary and unknown, as opposed to widely implemented and well documented SIP standard. Also, Skype’s rates for calls to the normal telephone network are much worse than what classic VoIP SIP operators propose (like BroadVoice which I happen to use). But Skype is winning the competition for the mass market because it just works. No complicated configuration, no additional devices, just download the software, install it and off you go. NAT? Firewalls? In most cases – zero problems.

That’s why I found even my geeky friends to use it. Reason? Simple – you can talk a complete non-geek through installing it, basic computer literacy is all that is needed.

Same about Groove. No hassle, just install it and work. They only have to tweak their business model some to become as ubiquitous as Skype already is. I wonder if now, under Microsoft’s ownership, they will figure it out – after all no one’s better than Microsoft at making their stuff ubiquitous.

I tried the Groove today (on learning that it was bought by Microsoft). And I must say that I love it. It simply solves one of my problems as a freelance consultant which has a computer at home, a laptop (or a series of laptops from different companies I work for) and occasionally a PC at an office – how to keep files consistent and up date in all those places. Groove easily integrates with the XP system I have to use and works well from behind firewalls – although I haven’t figured out yet what prevents it from synchronizing some jpeg images in one of the directories.

And I also like and understand the potential behind more complex services Groove offers for group collaboration like discussions, time sheets, calendar, meetings etc.

Now, if only a viable, cross-platform open source alternative existed… because to use its potential fully nearly everyone, or at least all people I work with on projects,would have to have it.

For now I’m already considering buying at least the filesharing option (which is not that expensive at around $70) when my trial period expires just for my own needs. And this is saying something because as far as I can remember I never ever bought a piece of software (not counting the Microsoft’s OS’s which came with the computers I had).

I was yesterday on a Buddhist lecture at our local Diamond Way center. Amongst the questions asked the issue of vegetarianism arose again. It is normal on Buddhist lectures that people, especially new to the subject ask questions about eating meat.

There are several reasons why this question is so common. First, it’s because in our culture people associate Buddhism with Hinduism out of ignorance. These two religions come from the same cultural roots, yet are very different in their goals, practices and outlook on world. But I think people ask about eating meat so much because quite soon after starting to learn more about Buddhism they hear all the teachings about sentient beings (term which encompasses everything alive, not only humans), need for compassion towards them and the bad consequences of harming them. And then this strange suggestion appears – you can eat meat, but only if it comes from an animal that has been already killed. Don’t kill animals yourself and don’t eat meat from animals that have been killed specifically for the purpose of being eaten by you, personally. A good example is that you come to your friends out in the country and they will tell you “so, we will kill this sheep or pig especially for you” and you should then say “no, thanks”.

It seems a bit hypocritical on the surface. So, you don’t kill and don’t eat animals that are killed for you – but you can eat a pork cutlet or a beef steak. What about all those animals that are being reared especially for that purpose – some would cry out.

And the Buddhist teachers have different ways of responding to that, but it all boils down to this – once it is a cutlet you can’t help it, no good would come out of the fact that you won’t eat it.

There are some other points here as well:

1. The fact that the animal and the butcher meet is primarily due to impressions in their minds and possibly is related to their previous unpleasant encounters. Whatever the cause, this has nothing to do with you – with the exception described above when you take ownership of the act of animal being killed for you specifically – or do it yourself.There is no way of going on living this life in this world without harming other sentient beings, because the world is full of them. The nice story about it is of Kalu Rinpoche explaining to a group of veggies that if they drink tea they could have as well be drinking blood – because of all the beings, mostly small and primitive, that have been killed in the process of  cultivating and preparing tea.

   To cut is short – you should do what you can to avoid consciously harming other beings, but the fact is that you can’t avoid it totally because that’s just impossible.

   And plants are sentient being too, by the way. Only with very limited senses. But on the absolute level they are the same as we – limitless space of mind at play, developing various forms.

2. The question of eating meat or not doesn’t seem to be an important prerequisite to enlightenment – and that’s what Buddhism is all about. To wake up from a dream you can’t concentrate on one or other aspect of it, but on the process of waking up. Enlightenment, they say, is waking up from this dream we think is reality.Buddha Shakyamuni did eat meat (in fact he said to his monks more or less “eat all they will give you”), many other enlightened masters did eat meat.

   Logically, if abstaining from eating meat was an important condition for enlightenment then Buddha would have told something about it, wouldn’t he?

   Tibet is a good example, the Buddhist culture was very strong there and many people did reach enlightenment over the ages – yet natural conditions make meat almost the only nutritional option available there for humans. For all practical purposes the only thing that grows in most parts of this mountainous country is grass. And there are some animals who eat grass. So, either you eat grass or the animals – because there is nothing else to eat.

   Logically, if eating meat would be something that precludes enlightenment no one would achieve it in Tibet, but since many did then it might not be that important.

   This whole concept that something you eat can make you impure in the spiritual sense has been criticized even in our own cultural setting by the guy name Jesus some time ago. Yet, it still lingers on.

Having said all that: if you don’t eat because of compassion for animals – that’s good. Especially, the motivation that drives you is good – it’s in your mind and it’s all about mind anyway. But don’t blame or intimidate others – and above all don’t feel better than others because you do so, because that’s a completely different motivation and would yield a different result.

After my remarks on Microsoft recently, where I mentioned Open Office, I decided to try it once more. And I must say that I’m impressed by the progress in this project since my last try two years ago. Then it was barely usable, now it is only a bit uncomfortable.

But it is catching up with MS’s suite pretty fast, right now MS’s advantages are:

• much better dictionaries and generally language support (Word is capable of suggesting style corrections or detect grammatical errors, Writer for now can do only spelling and has a thesaurus, also handling multiple languages in Writer is horrible, if you write in many languages and want to use spellchecks etc. then Writer will be a source of constant frustration. For example: right now I couldn’t get it to check this text for me using English dictionary, it keeps on switching to Spanish and I really tried everything. I ended by copying this text to MS Word, changing the language there and copying it back to Writer.),
• more streamlined and comfortable user interface (some things are very badly designed indeed in Writer, for example tables borders/shading is available only in edit table menu and not available also easily per cell via right-click as in Word, or there is no easy way of selecting zoom level without having to go through another pop-up window with choices),
• more control over some aspects of the layout.

But there are some very good features, one of the best is simple generation of PDF files with a single click and no additional external components unnecessary. And the PDFs generated are of good quality and very compact, usually remarkable smaller than generated with Word+Acrobat combination from the same document. Also, Writer can now open quite complex MS Office documents and even MS PowerPoint presentations, which have been particularly hard to handle in the past versions I knew.

In summary Open Office suite is now a very useful set of tools and one should really consider if the differences with MS Office are really worth its ripoff price.

That can’t be said on Linux on the desktop. I’ve tired Ubuntu, a distribution that was supposed to be desktop-oriented and easy, aimed at normal end-users. I’m sorry to say that, but previous Unix admin experience is a must if you are going to try this one. Installer works ok (although it had some problems with my graphic card and I had to finish the installation intuitively since the screen was garbled just when the installer was about to mess with the master boot record to install a boot loader there) but later on if you want anything out of standard you are back to command line, vi, scripts and man pages. Packages available from net (using nice graphic tool called Synaptic) are old, unless you switch to “unstable” version of the distribution but then other problems appear. For example, I tried to get a nice multimedia player called amaroK to run on my system. It took me 5 hours of hard work including recompiling packages and in the end upgrading my whole system to “hoary” (the unstable one) to achieve it. Any normal, non-geek user would give up way before I did.

So, as much as I was impressed with the Open Office progress I’m surprised by the total lack of progress in Linux on the desktop. It seems that geeks without a pointy-haired boss standing above them can’t produce a desktop system that would be usable to the rest of us. Pity. Luckily, there is the Max OS X – a stable Unix with a legendary, easy to use and complete Apple’s GUI. Now, if only their hardware could be cheaper (or my income greater)…