Archive for May, 2006
Wednesday, May 31st, 2006
SunFire-s 13% of workforce! Ouch… (SunFire pun intended)
Wow, looks like Sun is going to layoff 11-13% of its workforce this year… With so many management mistakes, it seems hardly fair the employees should be the ones let go… although I’m sure if Sam goofs, I too am likely to be out on the street before he will. Guess that’s just the luck of us non-CEOs…
Guess it’s time to put your wood behind one arrow Mr. Schwartz… may I suggest Linux? and release Java via the ASF (with apache/bsd or GPL license) too?
Friday, May 26th, 2006
Appears O’Reilly is THE “Web 2.0″
How funny; apparently O’Reilly is trying to claim rights to “Web 2.0″ as a service mark. That’s like trying to register “dot com bubble” as a mark isn’t it… I guess it depends on how you define Web 2.0 as there are wildly varying usages out there.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/05/26/web_2point0_battle/Â
Thursday, May 25th, 2006
Hmm… Vista looks a lot like XGL… or OS X…
Microsoft innovation: take features in the Mac OS X, add in help buttons, call widgets “gadgets” and call them your new OS… also noticed it looks surprisingly close to XGL.
http://www.eweek.com/slideshow/0,1206,pg=0&s=25983&a=179025,00.asp
Thursday, May 25th, 2006
“Open” analysts with new biz model grab InformationWeek’s attention
Just sat down to page through InformationWeek… and on page 47 (or click here for online story) noticed quite a write up about the “new” breed of analysts out there - most of which are sharing analysis and insights in the “open” in a somewhat community discussion style. This should be a pretty interesting study on industries that undergo change - the old either goes out or adapts with the new over time. Usually the old doesn’t change until the new take enough market share to force change… should be interesting to watch how this transition unfolds. You can check out Stephen O’Grady’s blog here.
One thing I didn’t see mentioned was that the blog/podcast medium really brings out the personality/flavor versus some of the stuffy, over pompous [insert big firm name here] reports you just can’t wait to throw in your trash bin…
The model of analyst firms always intrigued me - especially when most companies have experts in house that know more than analysts do… some of the top technologists I’ve ever met are at Wall Street firms… and analysts rely on those technologists to do their “analysis” … and yet the Wall St. Firm’s CIO pays the big analyst firms big money… to repeat what their technologists said… make sense?
For instance, what does Laura DiDio at Yankee Group know? She was an “investigative news” reporter before joining Yankee Group… as an IT Analyst. No, I’m not kidding. Admittedly, those Wall St. firms probably wouldn’t let her in the door, yet she gets quite a bit of publicity through Microsoft saying Linux “isn’t there yet” for SMBs… yet we all know a number of SMB shops who are loving Linux.
“DiDio began her reporting career in the mainstream and business press. As an investigative reporter, she worked for various broadcasting and print outlets, including CNN, Channel 5 News in New York and Channel 11 in Minneapolis.”
I welcome the “new” group of analysts. An open, frank discussion in public tends to weed out bias and develop a community consensus with all sides of an argument out on the table - similar to that thing called open source. What I really like to see is the analysts who eat the food they promote - it’s one thing to talk about what you’re seeing customers use Linux for - it’s another to use it yourself and talk with customers. Who was the last [big firm] analyst quoted about Linux that uses it themselves?
Wednesday, May 24th, 2006
Gartner: Linux overtaking Unix in DBMS Workloads
Gartner recently published a study of 1,800 companies on database management system workloads that has some interesting findings. One is the tremendous popularity for Linux as the OS of choice for databases. This complements the Oracle User Group report from around the same time frame that said Linux will soon be the top platform for Oracle deployments. I can’t do this Gartner report justice here - best to read the whole thing. The z/OS comeback was an interesting twist as well.
“With 39 percent today and 20 percent in the next 12 months, Linux is gaining rapidly, and with 59 percent (compared with 65 percent in Unix), this demonstrates that Linux will overtake Unix in the next few years.”
Source: Gartner (March 2006)
Wednesday, May 24th, 2006
Gary Krakow (MSNBC) Slams Vista Beta 2…
Sounds like Gary needs to test drive OpenSuse 10.1, Fedora Core 5 or maybe Ubuntu…
Tuesday, May 23rd, 2006
OpenLaszlo and what’s it good for?
I’ve run into OpenLaszlo a few times, but this is the best site I’ve seen (from Slashdot) describing what OpenLaszlo is/helps with. Very cool technology.
Monday, May 22nd, 2006
SEC Failing on its own Sarbanes Oxley controls?
http://finance.ithub.com/blogs/finance/archive/2006/05/04/9650.aspx
Looks like the SEC is having trouble with its own internal controls/procedures…
Monday, May 22nd, 2006
Very interesting… Redhat, Suse, Ubuntu Google trend…
http://www.google.com/trends?q=redhat%2C+suse%2C+ubuntu
redhat   
suse   
ubuntu Â
Friday, May 19th, 2006
AppArmor Video Presentation from FOSDEM2006
An intro video for Novell’s AppArmor. Cool stuff - and easier to use than SELinux roles. I’m really warming up to Suse… not sure what happened to me. I haven’t built a package from source in over a week and it’s having an odd effect …
Friday, May 19th, 2006
Changing the top image on an XGL “cube”
Ok, so you’ve gotten over the initial shock that you can twist turn and rotate your XGL desktop. Now you notice that grey, glah image at the top of the cube and wonder… “can I change that?” Of course you can.
First, copy your image as a .png over to /usr/share/compiz/ as root. Let’s say its image.png
Fire up gconf-editor and first go to key “apps -> compiz -> plugins -> cube -> screen0 -> options” and edit the “images” key and add an entry for “image.png” in the order you want for priority. If you twist your cube to reveal the top you should see your image now.
Next try this - go to “apps -> compiz -> plugins -> rotate -> screen0 -> options” and turn on (check) the snap-top key. This allows you to turn the cube so you’re looking at the top and the top will then snap into place to cover your screen as if it were another workspace.
Snaps into place to show:
Gentoo logo on an OpenSUSE Desktop cube…
Next up - skydome - the background around the cube… you can even animate it.
Thanks Moosy - you pointed me to the right places.
Friday, May 19th, 2006
OpenSUSE 10.1 = XGL Nirvana
I just setup XGL on OpenSUSE 10.1 using this guide. I’ll point out 1 error though. Where it says to add to the gnome-session-properties startup tab “compiz -replace” you actually need to add “compiz –replace gconf” (add second dash and gconf at the end).
Something either new to XGL that I never found on Gentoo or new to OpenSUSE is the “Desktop->Control Center->Desktop Effects Setting” plugin for XGL. This new configuration utility let’s you configure XGL from a nice GUI. You can configure just about anything - heck you can modify XGL to support a 10 sided “cube” (yes doesn’t make sense.. should be called a decagon, 10 sided polygon or something).
Anyway, if you’re running OpenSUSE, check it out. Also… I noticed Novell did some targeted ad placement… how’d they do that?
Friday, May 19th, 2006
CNN Interview with Linus Torvalds - The Reclusive World Traveler…
Interesting CNN interview with Linus. You can really see his personality come out, but one interesting piece is when Kristie Lu Stout from CNN asked just how big is the Linux developer community. Linus’ response:
I actually only work with a few handfuls so I tend to directly interact with maybe 10 - 20 people and they in turn interact with other people. So depending on how you count, if you count just the core people, 20 -50 people. If you count everybody who’s involved; five thousand people — and you can really put the number anywhere in between…
It’s crazy for me to think just how far Linux and open source has come that CNN is leading interviews suggesting that open source has hit the tipping point and is now mainstream (we all know it already has but if you’re reading this site, you’re probably close to the ground… CNN reporters… probably not).
Linus made one comment that I completely agree with and would just like to point out:
LT: In fact I often compare open source to science. To where science took this whole notion of developing ideas in the open and improving on other peoples’ ideas and making it into what science is today, and the incredible advances that we have had. And I compare that to witchcraft and alchemy, where openness was something you didn’t do. So openness is not something new, it is something that actually has worked for a long time.
And for others like our friends up in the Northwest to say that open source isn’t commercial or is not ‘reliable or dependable’ means science is not reliable or dependable… and yet most science is commercially appropriated… and most science is actually fairly reliable… hmm… wires crossed or our our friends up in the Northwest just absolutely blind to reality?? After all these years, Ballmer saying Windows needs to catch up, and market realities of Linux being the #2 OS, they still think it’s unreliable and not dependable??
Hmmm… Netcraft? so roughly 65% of domains are running on unreliable and non-dependable Apache software that doesn’t have a commercial model… right.
Wednesday, May 17th, 2006
OpenSUSE 10.1 3rd Party Repositories
Just thought I’d post this for any new OpenSUSE users (this is all basically the same for SLES too). I come from a Gentoo background where just about anything/everything I could imagine was available in the public portage tree (or that … other rumored… tree). With OpenSUSE, things are a bit different. My fairly educated guess is that there are legal reasons certain packages such as win32codecs are not included… so, how do we get these packages without compiling them individually? OpenSUSE relies upon YaST for just about everything. One piece is that YaST stores the location of the installation source.
Open YaST. Then under the Software menu option, you will see “installation sources”, and in the windows that appears, you will see a dropdown for “Add..” Here you can add a new install source location.
Now on this OpenSUSE webpage you will see a list of external package repositories. Just add one to your installation sources and now when you search for a package (e.g. win32codecs) you will be able to pull it down from an external repository.
Wednesday, May 17th, 2006
Cavs Win, coming back from down two in the series to taking the lead!
http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/boxscore?gameId=260517008
Wednesday, May 17th, 2006
“Ballmer: Linux Gains Set Microsoft R&D Agenda”
I just copy/pasted the headline from this Linux pipeline article. The headline captures it all - Microsoft now sees that Linux has made an impact and they’re trying to invest to catch up. After all these years of positioning Linux as “just a Unix replacement” the reality comes out.
Maybe someday, Ballmer will understand how a community development model can benefit even Microsoft (and benefit the stock I have in MSFT that is TANKING of late…) In an ideal world, Bill H. could stop wasting his time on analyst reports for “Get the Facts” and join the real Linux community… on port 6667 instead of port 25 (slight port jab).
Ballmer quotes from article:
“We need to have a better high-performance cluster technology that Linux does,” he said. “We are hard at work at it. You take a look at what is going on in security appliances, we need better technology. So there are two or three areas where Linux has really developed a position.”
My question: Hasn’t Ballmer always said open source was not a sustainable model and that it lacked innovation? If so… how did Linux get ahead of Windows??
http://www.linuxpipeline.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleId=187203198
Tuesday, May 16th, 2006
eWeek finally improves Kattoon accessibility
eWeek finally made it easier to read Spencer Katt’s Kattoons…
Tuesday, May 16th, 2006
WordPress on DB2?
Has anyone installed WordPress on IBM’s DB2? I posted the question in WP forums, but would like to get WP up on DB2…
Tuesday, May 16th, 2006
PS3 for My Birthday?
Just noticed that Sony’s PS3 will launch on my birthday… how timely…
Monday, May 15th, 2006
Cavaliers tie it up with Detroit
The Cavs are a young team and they’re back on fire - after dropping the first 2 to Detroit they’ve tied it up.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12807554/Â
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