Another software rant

I've said elsewhere--and often--that I wouldn't make a good farmer. Whenever I accidentally get underfoot and stepped on by an indifferent Universe, I don't pick myself up and dust off without a good round of shaking my fist and yelling at the sky.

Today at work is no different, and for the usual reasons. Namely Microsoft's presumptuousness with JavaScript implementation. In this case, using JavaScript to inject actual HTML into the .innerHTML value of a tag-set blows big sticky chunks. Whoodathunk that someone might be optimistic enough to take that .innerHTML property literally? Silly me.

Looking ahead to IE 8 (whose designers are allegedly flipping off the rest of the world in their implementation) is not pretty. For any client-intensive web app, it might just make sense to go to a Flash-based interface.

But there's a catch with that, too: Adobe's support for Flash on Linux--there is no delicate way to put this--sucks sewer sludge. And there's a whole 'nuther rant. The suits at Adobe are practically killing themselves making sloppy kissy-noises at the open source community just now. I'd be embarrassed for them if it weren't so patently self-serving. (It's like being hit on by some wanker who thinks his charms will make you overlook his wedding-ring: Eeew, Eeeeww, Eeeeewww.) C'mon boys, did we not use the right coversheet on your memo or something? Open source is a potluck. Inviting the peasants to dumpster-dive behind your McMansion is not the same thing.

Wanktards. All of 'em. Despite its datedness, I can't help going back to Bruce Sterling's "A Contrarian View of Open Source" lecture from 2002 for comfort -- and not just because it's hilarious in spots. The supermodel vs. hippie-chick metaphor will probably stick with me for the rest of my career, actually.

Fortunately, the pro-bono programming I need to get off my plate is (slowly) shrinking. All the sooner to get out of a Microsoft-addicted shop--hopefully easing into a micro ISV. Particularly when my own suits are making loud noises about offshoring programming. It's not that I'm overly worried about being unemployed. It's just that a career in babysitting flunkies is most emphatically NOT aligned with my career-goals. In fact, I'm not quite 100% positive I know which is actually the worst option.