Archive for August, 2007
Friday, August 31st, 2007
I’m heading out for vacation: back in 2 weeks, have some requests for while I’m out
Tonight I’m heading to Europe where I’ll be hopping around from city to city for the next couple weeks on vacation. So if you see no postings here, I’ve not been kidnapped by Microsoft or some other gang of anti-Linux admins (I narrowly escaped the last attempt).
So I expect the community to do a couple things while I’m out. First, please end this OOXML nonsense and get ISO leadership to step up as a true standards org should. Second, I fully expect Sun and Microsoft to start contributing code and resources into the open Linux community (we welcome you with open arms). Finally, I expect IDC and Gartner to start tracking Linux on non-x86 platforms for once… your customers have no idea just how fast its growing…
So I’ll be back in a couple weeks and will review your progress on these three basic requests ;-)
Thursday, August 30th, 2007
PC World exposes Microsoft’s OOXML Sweden scam; Gerrit says “Microsoft has many tricks…”
I saw this PC World article through Bob Sutor’s blog. Interesting tactics – not sure how this gives ISO any credibility. I think it’s time for a re-vote… not only did Microsoft pay for votes, they also suggested the partners try and make it look legit by attending a couple meetings after as well… this is an international standards voting process by technical experts??
In an information e-mail that, according to Microsoft, was sent to “a few” partner companies, the software giant stated that its partners were expected to register to vote with SIS and “take part in the meeting on Aug. 27 to vote yes for Office Open XML.”
Microsoft’s partners were also requested to attend more meetings after the vote in order to prove “their sincere participation”.
Gerrit has an interesting post bringing together a number of really good links over at his blog.
It is interesting to watch as Microsoft tries different strategies in dealing with the open source community, open standards and interoperability. This interesting ballot box management trick with OOXML is clever (oh, and if it is so good, repeat it, over and over again). Basically, manage the voting populace to ensure that only your voters turn out for a vote.
Tuesday, August 28th, 2007
Vista Enterprise users skipping the upgrade to Linux for Vista Ultimate instead?
Interesting article over at Microsoft-Watch.com about customers potentially buying Vista Ultimate instead of choosing SA for Vista Enterprise (I don’t blame them). I think they should also start considering Linux for at least a segment of their users…
Tuesday, August 28th, 2007
Slashdot: “Microsoft Bought Sweden’s ISO Vote on OOXML?”
It’s not often that I point to /. as a source, but this seems warranted (see post below).
How long will the world allow this to happen? At what expense does this come for the integrity and viability of international standards organizations – especially the one named ISO?
What if Vanderbilt could have standardized railroad tracks according to his own, proprietary, patented rail size and shape – would the US have prospered as it did? Most people don’t really care about standards – it’s often like the legal world where people say, “Just let the experts fight it out and come back to me with your answer.” But that’s not what’s happening here – in this case it’s not experts debating the merits of a standard – you’re looking at one company trying to lock the world into a lifetime payment plan under the guise of an open standard.
It’s time to get loud.
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/08/28/1237255
The vote on OOXML looked fairly secured. Most in the Working Group in Sweden was against the vote to approve OOXML. The day of the vote, though, more companies showed up at the door. Some 20 new companies — each one payed about $2500 to be allowed to vote — and vote they did … for Microsoft. Most of the new companies were partners from Microsoft who suddenly out of the blue joined the Working Group, payed membership fees and voted yes for approval. From the OS2World story: ‘The final result was 25 Yes, 6 No and 3 Abs and this would from the start be a done deal of saying No! Jonas Bosson who participated in today’s meeting on behalf on FFII said that he left the meeting in protest and so did also IBM’s Swedish local representative Johan Westman.’”
Monday, August 27th, 2007
Software donations or competition? Blurring lines…
Interesting move by Microsoft in India. I’m not usually one to downplay charitable donations, but I wonder about the impetus behind such a move… why not donate computers, power infrastructure, servers…? Is the timing of this a bit odd…?
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/08/27/ap4056758.html
Microsoft Corp. will distribute free software to nonprofit groups to boost charity in India, a company official said Monday.
Assuming Microsoft is not distributing GNU/Linux, “free software” should probably be written as “software for free”. I would appreciate it if someone calculated the cost this “free” software will impose on India in the future.
I would also appreciate if someone (say Canonical) could donate $1 TRILLION DOLLARS (with a pinky hold to the cheek) worth of truly free software called Ubuntu.
People of India, here’s 4 quadrillion licenses for Ubuntu available for free. Oh, and it won’t cost you anything in the long run either (unless you want support).
Sunday, August 26th, 2007
Microsoft bending on its hard stance against Linux in India?
Found this article and comment near the end quite interesting… will we see SQL Server on Linux anytime soon?? (obviously not, but the thought is interesting…)
With large customers finding newer ways of leveraging cost advantages of Linux, it is becoming compelling for Microsoft to start working towards opening its products to rival environments. “If they do not this now, they might become history,” said S. Sadagopan, founder director of Bangalore-based International Institute of Information Technology (formerly Indian Institute of Information Technology).
Sunday, August 26th, 2007
AltLaw.org aims to deliver public access to legal research
Found this great news through Luis.
Part of the “mystery” around the “legal field” for non-lawyers is a) most legal knowledge is locked up in books or behind expensive access points and b) interpreting those sources of information takes a bit of legal training. AltLaw should at least help with part a) as it intends to become a more open alternative for lawyers and the public at large.
AltLaw is a small effort to change that—to make the common law a bit more common. AltLaw provides the first free, full-text searchable database of Supreme Court and Federal Appellate case reports. It is a resource for attorneys, legal scholars, and the general public.
The database is not entirely exhaustive yet, so check out the “About” page to see what is currently covered (more hopefully on the way).
Saturday, August 25th, 2007
Visual Studio to Eclipse – get comfortable making a transition
IBM DeveloperWorks is a goldmine for fabulous information – here’s a new Eclipse starter article for those coming from a Visual Studio .NET IDE environment.
I actually did quite a bit of .NET programming back in the day (even had a very popular tutorial up at DotNetJohn.com). Can you believe it? Anyway, transitioning from .NET to Java is a bit awkward, even worse is trying to understand a different worklow in Eclipse than what you’re used to in the VS environment. I think the brightest part of the Microsoft portfolio is the VS suite of tools – hands down. However, there are many issues outside of usability that tend to entice developers to drop VS and go somewhere else. If you’re a VS-oriented person and looking to dabble in Eclipse, this one is for you. I will admit up front, it’s VERY basic and if you’re looking for language-specific build or project management types of information, you may want to do a bit more searching on the site for deeper articles.
Saturday, August 25th, 2007
‘Hello World’ rises to the top of Microsoft’s open source successes?
URL: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2174730,00.asp
Just after eWeek ran an article on the Top 25 Microsoft CodePlex projects, SVN takes a closer look at what these projects really are about. SVN finds out some interesting information as he “gets the facts” on Microsoft’s “open source” playground…
Number two is the Microsoft SQL Server Product Samples: Engine. This “program” is simple sample code for SQL Server. It was last updated on, get this, December 9, 2005. The primary example is, get this, how to do “Hello World” in SQL Server.
Friday, August 24th, 2007
Gerrit’s Blogging! Add this feed.
It’s great to see Gerrit Huizenga blogging over at blogspot. If you’re into Linux, add gh-linux to your feedreader or make sure to check in periodically. Gerrit works in IBM’s Linux Technology Center (LTC) on a number of kernel development areas – should be interesting to see what he has to say.
Friday, August 24th, 2007
SUNW == JAVA, yes, it’s true.
So I guess Sun really did change it’s ticker symbol from SUNW to JAVA… personally given how much they’ve been touting open source software, communities, etc. I would have personally chosen something different (”OPEN” was my suggestion to a few yesterday). Considering Sun’s growth in Linux according to the analyst firms, perhaps “LNUX” could have been a better choice ;-)
JAVA… hmmm… what does the word JAVA convey these days? I’m not sure I’d pick JAVA… but then again, I’m not the CEO of a public company.
Friday, August 24th, 2007
Forbes: “India Won’t Endorse Microsoft’s Office Standard”
India has become the latest country to reject Microsoft’s global bid to provide an alternative standard for electronic office documents. India will now vote against Microsoft’s proposal at the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in Geneva, joining countries like China and Canada.
After a meeting of the Bureau of Indian Standards in New Delhi Thursday, its technical committee chairperson, Nita Verma, told the media: “We unanimously agree on the disapproval of OOXML [Open Office Extensible Mark Up Language] with comments. The same will be submitted to ISO.”
Thursday, August 23rd, 2007
Wordpress.com captures amazing Year over Year growth
Congratulations to Matt and the rest of the Wordpress.com folks – I just saw his post on their growth according to Nielson and was amazed. The growth is well deserved and I’d have to say I’ve noticed more and more people switching over to WP.
Webware just publish some Nielson numbers that show WordPress.com as the #4 blog site in July, after Blogger, TMZ, and Typepad. Number four isn’t that hot, but the year over year growth was 398% which is 7-10x more than those above us.
Thursday, August 23rd, 2007
Linux user community growing by “orders of magnitude” is a problem, says Sun…
http://www.cio.in/news/viewArticle/ARTICLEID=3589
“Over the last five or 10 years, orders of magnitude more people in the world know Linux environment than know Solaris. This is a problem,” said Ian Murdock…
Why again is this a problem? (Update: please also see the comments, where Ian points out, “I said it’s a problem for Solaris adoption, not that it’s a problem in itself.”)
It’s great to see Linux growing – a real challenge to Microsoft even – it’s only a problem when you’re hanging onto a legacy platform… not sure I can agree ;-) Just think of where Windows would be had Linux never happened… I doubt anyone would argue that without Linux, Solaris would have posed just as much a threat…
After all this time, Sun still has not figured out how to leverage Linux rather than just try to kill it… what a lost opportunity – not to mention, a disservice to shareholders. At least Marc Hamilton, Sun vice president of marketing for the Solaris group, is able to recognize where the growth is:
Also during the meeting, Hamilton said the company continues to see rapid adoption of Intel servers running Linux.
Thursday, August 23rd, 2007
Apache vs IIS: What’s behind the numbers spin?
This is worth reading if you’ve ever read a spin on Netcraft’s survey hype for share gains/loss…
http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2007/08/microsoft_catch.html
It seems we’re back to square one. Lies, damned lies, and statistics it is.
Thursday, August 23rd, 2007
“Industry Standard” processors forking?
Should be interesting to see how the competition between AMD and Intel plays out… they already chose different paths on other instructions (i.e. virtualization) for their processors. However, it still remains that most x86 code can be compiled and run on either Intel or AMD and most software developers avoid writing to instructions that only run on one. Could the multicore/multithread benefits lead to a fork in software that divides this “industry standard”?? Will be interesting to watch…
http://www.regdeveloper.co.uk/2007/08/14/amd_lwp_extensions/
Wednesday, August 22nd, 2007
Thank you for your patronage Microsoft; I’m using Windows Vista (for now).
I rarely check my web stats, but reading Stephen’s post on network services for whatever reason prompted me to look at my website stats. So one view I can see is the most frequently visited IP blocks that visit my site. This is interesting b/c if you resolve the most common IP addresses to the ARIN owner, you can see where some of the most frequent visitors might be located.
Number 3 on my list of most frequent visits for the last 12 months was 65.54.188.17 — which resolves to…. Microsoft, Redmond…
So this could mean a few things… (rampant speculation below):
- Microsoft is interested in what I say and is taking Linux to heart – perhaps doing massive Stage 1 Gentoo installs (shame that’s pretty much gone as a practice…),
- Perhaps Microsoft employees are interested in subjects like what it takes to have a truly successful open source community of developers, open standards, investors, and multiple vendor collaboration…
- Microsoft wants to gather competitive intelligence based on my work at IBM based on what I write here (hmm… good luck)
- Microsoft employees are very interested in comparing the Canon Rebet XT and XTi (search stats show it’s a popular search query)
- I need to write more about Vista, Windows Server, and .NET and cater to my audience.
- Microsoft is secretly trying to drop signals that I should join their company and figure out a better open source strategy for them than threatening IP suits against customers…
Ultimately, I think this stat tells me #5 ;-)
So the interesting piece here is I just started using Windows Vista on a new system this weekend (promptly added Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon as a dual boot). When it comes to operating systems and software, I’ll try ANYTHING and so it was time to refresh my Windows desktop knowledge.
I’ll post more as I have time, but I’ll kick all of this off with what I like about Windows Vista:
- It’s a step up from Windows Me (ok, but really, XP was so much faster… what happened)
- Vista implements UAC (FINALLY), although … poorly… but it’s there at least.
- Vista went a whole 4 days before being infected with the first virus (ok, I trusted public IP port 80 traffic to it… could say it’s my fault, but no, doubt it)
- IE7… nicely integrated, finally has tabs, slimmer interface
- DVD support out of the box??? Maybe one of the other software vendors slipped in the DVD codecs, but I think they actually came with Vista this time – good move.
- Microsoft Outlook Express is now renamed Windows Mail and so far seems better than Outlook Express if you ask me. Simple email app – not much to screw up. I switched to Outlook 2003 already.
- Windows Sidebar – widgets everywhere – ok, maybe just one or two, but the eye candy is appealing. The performance bar widget I downloaded revealed that approx 33% of my 2GB of RAM is used up in an idle state – yes, nearly 666MB is devoted to just having Vista sit there doing nothing…. dare I start an application? and aren’t the triple 6’s an odd omen??
- Windows gets an A for the visual appeal of the artwork and color schemes. I really do like the visual experience.
- Drivers – I thought this would be a horrible issue based on what I read, but my system (albeit a new system) didn’t really have any driver issues except for 1 (USB Audio… still can’t get that to work….). I have a ton of peripherals (printers, scanners, external burners, HD camcorder, cameras, etc) and aside from my speakers everything else worked (after downloading the appropriate drivers of course). Why Microsoft cannot find a better way (ahem, ala RHN) to distribute updates and drivers is beyond me….
That’s it for now. Of course I have the laundry list of “I wish it did X” issues, and so far I’m a bit disappointed, but no operating system lacks some bright spots. The Windows Vista install process was actually quite appealing – loved the changes (especially the hard drive configuration).
Anyway – to those Microsoft employees reading this, start posting comments – could use some increased interaction. I’m actually trying out Vista and taking it for a spin – I didn’t realize PowerShell did not ship with it, but I intend to check it out. Not sure what else is new, but I’ll peruse the usual “here’s what’s new in Vista” tech sites when I have time. If you have anything cool to point out I’d like to hear it.
Tuesday, August 21st, 2007
Scoble Interviews IBM’s top IP lawyer, Dave Kappos – a “must watch” if you’re into open standards, open source and IP
I’m admittedly not much of a “Scoble-fan”, but this is an outstanding interview with IBM’s Dave Kappos (IBM’s top intellectual property lawyer). About 12 minutes in is a discussion on the stresses collaborative innovation introduces on the 20th century IP model we have today. The entire video is absolutely worth watching or listening to. I will say that Dave is one of the great lawyers in the legal community that really *get it* when it comes to open standards, open source software and IP.
http://www.podtech.net/home/3844/a-hour-with-ibms-top-intellectual-property-lawyer
Tuesday, August 21st, 2007
Windows Vista: Gone in 4 days
I learned today that the Windows Vista pc I setup over the weekend is now infected with trojan viruses… guess I should not have been using trusted Windows new security with public exposure via my dyndns account… but I mean seriously – 4 days???? I’m tempted to flag this post as humor…
UPDATE: AVG which discovered the viruses was able to remove them after extensive system scans and a reboot.
Sunday, August 19th, 2007
Video Editing Software for Linux? Help?
I recently splurged on a Sony HDR-SR7 HD digital camcorder (the hard drive based one). It’s *very* impressive for taking videos, but now I want to edit them… Does anyone know of a commercial video software package that runs on Ubuntu or RHEL5 that I can use to edit the AVCHD format these movies commpress into? I’m willing to pay up to a couple hundred dollars to not have to install Windows on my system… Canon, Sony, Panasonic, etc all use this video format now, and unfortunately none of the typical open source software video editors can handle this format. Ideally I’d like to just use Ulead’s VideoStudio 11 Plus as it appears to have all the features I want (except Linux support)… I can’t imagine any of these apps run well in Wine.. and CodeWeavers does not seem to have tested them.
Not a knock on Ubuntu, but this is where I think Ubuntu could separate itself from the other distros/commercial OSs… work with the ISVs for a desktop user and get a full suite of apps available on the platform (i.e. like Apple does). I would also like a good photo printer for Ubuntu that has proper color calibration (the wish list goes on…)
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