Many people bemoan the unceasing bickering and so called "holy wars" in the Free/libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) world. The process of repeatedly redrawing battle lines such as vi vs emacs (and emacs vs xemacs), xfree86 vs xorg, KDE vs GNOME, BSD vs Linux, and the Free Software Foundation vs the Open Source Initiative is an essential part of what makes FLOSS into great software. As painful as it may be to watch, the divisions, factionalism, and emotionalism are fundamental to the process of creating FLOSS and can't be excised without diminishing the software itself.

Most rational human beings would agree that the flame wars over operating systems are ignorant at least and pointless at best. A few of them are, I suppose, somewhat understandable. Windows 3.1 versus OS/2, Unix versus Windows NT, Windows XP versus MacOS--these are all givens in a computing environment with room for different perspectives. That said, the battle between aficionados of Linux and BSD is not only silly but hurts both parties with every attack.

As a commercial website designer, you quickly learn that a business wants a website for one reason: to sell more stuff. To that end, a site you design for a company needs to translate into tangible sales. You can create a quality site with eye-catching images and a lot of relevant text and information. You can learn how search engines work and exploit that knowledge to increase site rankings. You can even pay for an advertising service such as Google Adwords. Everything you do to develop a commercial site, promote it, and increase your client's bottom line is in your control. That is, everything except your inclusion in the Open Directory Project.

For some reason, technical aptitude and good interpersonal skills are rarely present in the same individual. There are many brilliant technology professionals with a tomes of knowledge to contribute to the rest of us but--for whatever reasons--they often don't. This was my original motivation for giving a writer's perspective in writing tech articles in two previous articles.

I'd like to continue by focusing this time on how our words can inadvertently say things to our readers that are confusing, irritating, or just plain untrue. Just a few poorly chosen words can cause a reader to hold a grudge against an author or an entire website for a long time. Even worse, the negative comments (on not only your site but the reader's) that may come as a result will discourage other readers from visiting while also discouraging you, the writer.

How much do you pay for technical support and information technology related staff? Regardless of the amount, its probably not what it should be. It is certainly possible that you aren't paying enough, but equally likely you are paying too much, or just not getting as much as you should for that price. This is particularly true for small businesses.

If you want to get the most out of your IT dollar, there are three simple things you can do right now.

I have seen a few arguments about how porting free Linux applications to Windows is a bad thing. Why?

Does your business contract an IT consultant? If your business is large enough to have an IT department, it probably doesn't. If it is a smaller business, you probably still don't. But in either case it's something you need to consider.

There are a number of reasons why businesses need IT consultants and I'm constantly trying to get them across to the management types I meet with. Whether you are needing to cut expenses from the corporate budget or you need to make paperwork more efficient, a good consultant can get you closer to your goals than you'll ever get on your own.