The problem with Linux

Over at ZDNet Australia, Steven Deare asks a very pertinent question about why the decision by Kennards Hire to switch from Windows to Linux on all of it’s desktops has sadly remained inconspicuous:

Why has the country’s biggest known desktop Linux implementation gone relatively unpublicised for so long? This week I wrote about Kennards Hire’s project to migrate its whole IT infrastructure to Linux. The project should be a milestone reference point for vendors like Novell and Sun who keep telling us Linux is ready for the desktop, despite a dearth of local customers.

You’d think that this was indeed a golden opportunity for the major vendors to prove that Linux is ready for the desktop in a business environment.

Based on our experience, the only problem with Linux is the perception that it’s not as “good” as Windows. And the only way to change that is through more effective marketing and self-promotion.

Sensis ignoring your business? Sure, but why?

Do you operate a small business, here in Australia? If so, is it listed in the online versions of the “yellowpages” and “whitepages” directories?

Are you sure?

If, like us, you’re actually not listed in either directory, do you know why? If you do, would you kindly let us know because the support people at Sensis seemingly either have no idea or refuse to reveal their reasons.

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Stripping whitespace in PHP

Here’s a simple way to strip all whitespace from a string in PHP, which is useful for properly trimming any user input:

function realtrim($mixed) {
   if (is_array($mixed)) {
      return array_map('realtrim', $mixed);
   }
   if (strlen($mixed) > 0) {
      $mixed = trim(preg_replace('/[\s]+/', ' ', $mixed));
   }
   return $mixed;
}

The above function will strip all multiple spaces, tabs, line feeds and carriage returns. It also has the capability to accept an array as input, making it particularly suitable for web forms.

Searching for search engines?

If you want proof that there’s still a significant percentage of internet users who haven’t bothered to learn even the basics of how to use their browser, look no further than the Wordtracker top keywords list:

Based on the current top 30 keywords, we can see that 7 of the top 12 searches didn’t need to be searches at all.

If only users understood that their browser has a location bar, where they could directly type in the URL of the website they’re trying to get to, they wouldn’t have to search for search engines like Google and Yahoo, which they’re doing at the moment.

Spellchecking from Visual Basic

Here’s a quick way to run a spellcheck on any data stream from within your VB6 application:

Function SpellCheck(Stream As String) As String
   On Error Resume Next
   Dim W As Object
   Set W = CreateObject("Word.Basic")
   SpellCheck = Stream
   With W
     .AppMinimize
     .FileNewDefault
     .EditSelectAll
     .EditCut
     .Insert Stream
     .StartOfDocument
     .ToolsSpelling
     .EditSelectAll
      If Mid(.Selection, Len(.Selection), 1) = Chr(13) Then
        .Selection = Mid(.Selection, 1, Len(.Selection) - 1)
      End If
      If Len(.Selection) > 1 Then
         SpellCheck = .Selection
      End If
     .FileCloseAll 2
     .AppClose
   End With
   Set W = Nothing
End Function

It will only work on those PC’s that have Microsoft Word already installed. You may want to modify the error handling logic to suit your taste. I’ve simply chosen to return the original text if the function encounters any serious errors with the spellcheck library.