Archive for March, 2007
Saturday, March 31st, 2007
OpenOffice.org 2.2 Released
New Features: http://development.openoffice.org/releases/2.2.0.html
Looks mostly like bugfixes and improvements in kerning for fonts.
Thursday, March 29th, 2007
Macros for the web - let your browser do all your work ;-)
http://news.com.com/IBMs+developing+Wiki+how-to+tool/2100-1046_3-6171905.html?tag=html.alert
Automate your Firefox web browsing!
Thursday, March 29th, 2007
Linus ‘pretty pleased’ with latest GPL3 draft
http://news.com.com/2061-10795_3-6171300.html?tag=newsmap
I love the practical side of Linus, couldn’t ask for a better person to be at the center ring of the Linux community.
“I’m actually pretty pleased. Not because I think it’s perfect, but simply because I think it’s certainly a lot better than I really expected from the previous drafts,” he said in an interview. “Whether it’s actually a better license than the GPLv2, I’m still a bit skeptical, but at least it’s now ‘I’m skeptical’ rather than ‘Hell no!’”
Wednesday, March 28th, 2007
Latest GPL3 draft is available
http://news.com.com/GPL+getting+tougher+on+patent+deals/2100-7344_3-6171247.html?tag=html.alert
And the actual text is here:
http://gplv3.fsf.org/gpl-draft-2007-03-28.html
Wednesday, March 28th, 2007
Sun in hot water over at the GSA
Listen to the first video at 2:30 min in and the second video about 2:30 mins in…. Not good for Sun… as if our Federal gov’t didn’t have enough reason to migrate off Solaris to RHEL5 already :-) The second one is unbelievable as Sen. Grassley goes into the details.
http://www.speaker.gov/blog/?p=187
Tuesday, March 27th, 2007
Beryl > Compiz and it’s now in Ubuntu Universal
I really really like Beryl. I just installed it on my home Ubuntu desktop and all I can say is “WOW” (a real “wow”, not one of those Vista “wow”s). The beryl-manager makes it so easy to configure rather than the Compiz method of using gconf-editor. I also found it so easy to install now that it’s in Ubuntu Universal. Just do a “sudo apt-get install beryl beryl-manager” and that’s it - you’re ready to go. Start up bery-manager and you can configure anything you want. (at least that’s all it took with Feisty)
I’ve noticed Beryl has some of the more leading edge effects built in. The 3D cube makes what I already thought was 3D even better by popping overlapping windows up off the desktop background for a definite “WOW” effect. Then you have the rain, wiper, waves, etc. Anyway, you just have to check it out - it’s too easy not to. The coolest effect is when you set the Windows close event to make the window burn up in flames. It’s fantastic to just watch it over and over.
Tuesday, March 27th, 2007
Zimbra leverages Apache Derby for offline email/calendar access
Cool technology coming out of Zimbra leveraging Apache Derby for offline access. I need to try this out some day… I inted to get Asterisk up and running soon at home in a VMWare image on Ubuntu. I saw a new spin they featured in eWeek for AsteriskNow as an appliance and it looks like they’ve put a new face on everything - it may actually be possible to set the thing up now.
Tuesday, March 27th, 2007
Great eCryptfs article in Linux Journal
Unfortunately it’s not public… sorry.
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/9400
The Gentoo wiki has a relatively *sparse* HOW-TO entry :-) But that really does just show how easy it is to use ecryptfs. It’s fantastically simple for basic tasks - they just added key support which will need some documentation.
The documentation page for the project is probably the best place to start if you don’t have Linux Journal access.
Tuesday, March 27th, 2007
Linux Foundation Board Members are Officially Announced
http://www.linux-foundation.org/wordpress/?p=336
The declared an aim to attract board members from every corner of the diverse Linux ecosystem, and looking at the list, I’d say the Linux Foundation is off to a great start. Somehow, Microsoft did not earn a board seat with the Novell deal - shocking, I know.
The Linux Foundation (LF), the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced its new board of directors, a diverse group that represents the key stakeholders from every corner of the Linux ecosystem: the Linux kernel community, Linux vendors, distributions and users, as well as individual open source leaders.
Board Members (the URL above has very brief bios if you don’t recognize a name) in alphabetical order by last name:
- James Bottomley, SteelEye
- Wim Coekaerts, Oracle
- Masahiro Date, Fujitsu
- Doug Fisher, Intel
- Dan Frye, IBM
- Tim Golden, Bank of America
- Hisashi Hashimoto, Hitachi
- Christine Martino, HP
- Marc Miller, AMD
- Brian Pawlowski, NetApp
- Markus Rex, Novell
- Tsugikazu Shibata, NEC
- Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu
- Andrew Updegrove, Gesmer Updegrove LLP
- Christy Wyatt, Motorola
Tuesday, March 27th, 2007
DeveloperWorks Interview with Dan Frye on Linux security
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/podcast/dwi/cm-int031307txt.html
Interesting interview with Dan Frye. There’s also a podcast if you don’t feel like reading off the wonderfully beautiful DeveloperWorks page template… (sarcasm abound)
Tuesday, March 27th, 2007
Oracle participation in OIN
Monday, March 26th, 2007
WordPress Comment License Plug-In 1.0
http://alexking.org/blog/2007/03/26/comment-license-10
I had to smirk when I saw this… a plug-in for including your comments license below the comments form ;-)
If anything, it shows how rounded and mature WordPress has become!
Monday, March 26th, 2007
El Reg: “DMCA architect lambasts music moguls”
Gee… they just discovered the DMCA is not working… I also wonder why Congress, as representatives of the people, seem to rely a bit more on the voiced concerns of the RIAA , MPAA and other media moguls… while he cites music, I firmly believe they’re in denial about movies. I have seen some signs of change though with movies on demand, but like all the pay for music companies, they all have some sort of DRM attached that halts their adoption. Apple is certainly pushing the envelope here, but it’s not going fast enough and far enough away from DRM for consumers.
“Our attempts at copyright control have been unsuccessful. At least in terms of music, I think we’re entering a ‘post-copyright era’.”
Sunday, March 25th, 2007
PS3 Cell BE Processors Computing up a Storm at Folding@Home
From James, found a new link to data on Folding@Home stats. 30K Cell BE CPUs in Sony PS3s WW running Folding@Home are currently cranking out 482 TFLOPS - compare that to 161,000 Windows PCs (5x the # of PS3s) cranking away to produce merely 154 TFLOPS (3x LESS than the few # of PS3s).
So with this data in mind, think of what you would use for your next compute cluster: a group of Windows PCs or a cluster of PS3s running Linux….? Based on the stats, 1 Cell BE CPU is cranking out 0.016 TFLOPS. 1 Windows PC processor is currently cranking out 0.00095 TFLOPS.
That means Folding@Home would need 506,000 Windows PCs to do the work of roughly 30K Sony PS3s. Think of the power, heat, space savings from that! That’s roughly 16 Windows PCs to accomplish the same amount of work as 1 PS3. Even at $500 per Windows PC, that’s a substantial cluster hardware savings as well…
Certainly benchmarkers would point out many flaws in this rough analysis. This sort of compare doesn’t provide a purely equal comparison as it also depends on what workloads are running on the PS3s or Windows PCs that are cranking out data. There are certainly also chances that some of the Windows PCs are more powerful and others bringing down the averages and making a Windows PC vs PS3 comparison less fair. However, it’s interesting to note the trends ;-)
And all those research students now have a reason to buy new PS3s for the labs!
Sunday, March 25th, 2007
Firefox hits 25% share in Europe
From Stephen - found this interesting stat - Firefox now has nearly 25% of the European browser market according to XiTiMonitor. That’s phenomenal success - and a wake up call for the RoW to catch up to the Europeans (I think if we turn this into an inter-continental challenge, it may get more support - like a World Cup gone browser wars).
Friday, March 23rd, 2007
Ubuntu Feisty Beta is Ready… wait…
I’ve been using Feisty for weeks now at home… I didn’t realize it wasn’t even to beta yet (in which case I’m VERY impressed with the Alpha!)
Friday, March 23rd, 2007
Face off: Microsoft vs Digium for small business VoIP
I’m going to guess Microsoft will win a large chunk of this market ‘just because’ but I have a strong feeling Digium with Asterisk will give them credible competition. If Asterisk were more ‘out of the box user friendly’, then I’d call it a real battle. It’s about having the hardware+software+service_providers+SIs all lined up to go.
Friday, March 23rd, 2007
Akismet approaching 1 BILLION spams blocked
Matt is wondering when Akismet will hit 1 billion block spam comments… seems it will be very soon. I’m sure this is yet another indicator of the success of Wordpress which is probably driving much of the users plugging into Akismet.
Friday, March 23rd, 2007
Speaking of Ubuntu: Ubuntu Linux on Niagara T2000 outperforms Solaris Express and Solaris 10 on Apache web serving
http://www.stdlib.net/~colmmacc/2006/04/13/more-ubuntu-on-t2000/
This shows just how well Linux is positioned technically to take advantage of massive core and thread counts as the processor technologies scale out-within. On hardware not designed for Linux and against a HW+OS stack vendor who you assume has done quite a bit of tuning, it’s quite an impressive performance feat for Linux. Way to go Ubuntu.
Friday, March 23rd, 2007
Ubuntu Live: July 22-24, 2007 in Portland, Oregon
I remember Mark telling me about this but nearly forgot completely - thanks to the Ubuntu news I got a reminder - interesting to see the integration alongside OSCON - I personally think it’s a great idea. If I make it to OSCON, I’ll definitely attend. I wonder if we can get someone from IDC to attend (since they seem to have trouble seeing Ubuntu’s impact/reach).
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Listen. Discuss. Learn. Ubuntu in action.
Useful, accessible, customizable, and freely available, Ubuntu is the most popular Linux variant on the planet. Ubuntu Live is being launched to provide a meeting place for Ubuntu users, contributors, and partners–and the Ubuntu-curious. Learn how Ubuntu can make a critical difference in your business or project and engage with the global open source community at the largest Ubuntu gathering yet.
Ubuntu Live’s wide-ranging program will give participants all the knowledge they need to explore and set in motion the powerful features in Ubuntu and related applications. Expert-led tutorials, big-picture plenary gatherings, focused sessions, and a lively “hallway track” bring all participants face to face with the worldwide Ubuntu community. Ubuntu Live tutorials coincide with OSCON to further connect Ubuntu users with the larger open source community. Make 2007 your summer of open source. Join us at the very first Ubuntu Live, happening July 22-24, 2007 in Portland, Oregon.
Registration for Ubuntu Live opens in April. Sign up for the conference newsletter (login requied) to receive the latest announcements and to be notified when registration opens.
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