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Ted's Radio Weblog
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Saturday, April 30, 2005 |
Laura and I were at our local Apple dealer - Bitznbytes in Concord - at 6 PM last night to pick up a copy of Tiger. Fortunately, there was no long line of loonies dressed as strange characters - no wait at all, in fact - walked in and picked up our copy, chatted with the staff, played with the computers and left.
Today was much too nice a day to spend inside playing on the computer - Laura and I worked in the yard instead - so I'll devote a little time over the weekend to getting the machine backed up and set up for the upgrade. O'Reilly & Associates web site MacDevCenter like "Everything You Need to Know to Install Tiger and "Housecleaning Tips for Tiger" worth reviewing before you leap in.
As my iMac is primarily a desktop machine for NeoOffice/J documents, email, browsing, blogging and as a terminal into remote machines, I don't have a lot of software installed on it, and so I'm going to try the lazy man's approach of upgrade-in-place, rather than a Freemanize of "blow everything away" - partition, format and reinstall - that would be more appropriate for a more heavily used machine. If the install gets glitchy, of course. that's always the last resort. Stay tuned.
Ars Technica has a review of Tiger here including what seems to be a well-deserved bash of the Mail GUI redesign and a great explanation of fine-grained vs. course-grained kernel locking. Ars Technica has also started a set of journal pages, including an Apple journal page appropriately named "Infinite Loop."
3:57:52 PM 
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Friday, April 29, 2005 |
Barring a successful injunction from Tiger Software -- interesting that they waited until Ship Day Eve to sue! - Tiger, Mac OS X version 10.4 goes on sale officially today. The news sites are filled with interesting insights:
Pitting Tiger Server vs. Windows Server. After a week of non-stop Longhorn news, it's time for Apple Computer to let the big cat out of the bag. The next version of the Mac client and server operating system is set to ship today. [Microsoft Watch from Mary Jo Foley]
Apple sued over 'Tiger' name. Apple is being sued by U.S. e-commerce site TigerDirect.com for infringing on its trademark with the launch of the latest version of Mac OS X, code-named "Tiger." [Computerworld News]
Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. The time period between the release of Panther and Tiger (Mac OS X 10.3 and 10.4) has been the longest since Mac OS X was first released in 2001. During that 18-month period, Apple has been busy adding new features to the OS. They run the gamut from the readily-apparent (e.g., Spotlight and Dashboard) to under-the-hood tweaks (like improved support for metadata). By news@arstechnica.com (Ars Technica)
12:11:19 PM
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Thursday, April 28, 2005 |
Slashdot notes Rave Reviews for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. druid_getafix writes "The first mass market reviews of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger are trickling in with a big thumbs up for the release. Walt Mossberg of the WSJ says 'Tiger Leaps Out in Front' but complains about slowness of some applications - notably Mail. David Pogue of NYT says 'But with apologies to Mac-bashers everywhere, Spotlight changes everything. Tiger is the classiest version of Mac OS X ever and, by many measures, the most secure, stable and satisfying consumer operating system prowling the earth.' In related news Mossberg also covers the rising incidence of spam/virii in the Windows world and says '...consider dumping Windows altogether and switching to Apple's Macintosh...'. Previous reviews of Tiger were covered on /. earlier."
OSNews reports *Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger: A Review*. "OSNews reviews Apple's latest OS upgrade. Is it an overpriced, glorified point release or a truly worthy upgrade with major new functionality? Is it a Longhorn killer or just more of the same? We'll take a look, and try to see what's on the surface as well as what's under the hood. Read more on this exclusive OSNews article..."
I've reserved a copy at my local Apple dealer, Available tomorrow at 6 PM.
12:05:41 PM
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Wednesday, April 27, 2005 |
InfoWorld: Top News reports WINHEC - Microsoft slams XP in call for Longhorn support. "SEATTLE - Microsoft on Tuesday badmouthed its own work on networking and hardware support in Windows XP in order to sell hardware makers on new technologies it has planned for Longhorn, the next version of Windows due late next year."
Later in the article... "Khaki then called Microsoft employees on stage to demonstrate how Microsoft plans to do better in Longhorn"
Amazing.
7:50:29 AM
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Tuesday, April 26, 2005 |
The monthly meeting of CentraLUG, the Concord/Central New Hampshire chapter of the Greater New Hampshire Linux Users Group, recurs the first Monday of each month on the New Hampshire Technical Institute campus starting at 7 PM.
Directions and maps are available on the NHTI site at http://www.nhti.edu. This month, we'll be meeting in the Library/Learning Center/Bookstore, http://www.nhti.net/nhtimap.pdf , marked as "I" on that map. The main meeting starts at 7 PM, with Ed Lawson presenting Scribus, an open desktop publishing system. Open to the public. Free admission. Tell your friends.
Scribus is available from http://www.scribus.org.uk and is not just another pretentious word processor, but an entire pre-press system for producing high-quality documents suitable for publication. It will generate PDF. It has a new "Scriptor" API for scripting in Python. Imports and exports SVG. Bells! Whistles! It runs natively under Linux and under X11 on Mac OS X and CygWin on Windows. Scribus is distributed under the GPL.
More details at about this meeting and the group are available at http://www.centralug.org and http://www.gnhlug.org.
Hope to see you there!
10:08:36 AM
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Monday, April 25, 2005 |
OSNews points to Of Course Macs Are More Expensive... Aren't They?. "So, I went out to at least partially test this theory, and to do appropriate comparisons between Dell computers and Apple computers. I'm hardly the first one to take this challenge but I've decided it's time to stop talking and taking other peoples' word for it, and go get some concrete facts to put on (digital) paper."
This looks like a well-reasoned, well-researched study. Take a look and see if you come to similar conclusions.
1:44:52 PM
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A strange article at InfoWorld: Top News titled Microsoft: Let the 64-bit era begin. Microsoft was one of the companies that started the Windows 64-bit era with Windows NT running on the PowerPC, MIPS, and Alpha chips in the early 90s. DEC produced the Alpha chip and went on to port UNIX to the chip as Tru64 UNIX. Sun responded with the UltraSPARC in 1995, also 64-bit. For reasons unclear to me, Microsoft dropped all but the Intel 32-bit version of their Windows products in 1999, effectively ceding the 64-bit market to to Sun, DEC, Compaq and HP. Linux has run on 64-bit chips since they were available. A recent post on the GNHLUG board indicates that Linux will run on an AMD64 laptop as well. Wow, 64 bits on a laptop!
The article mentions the 64-bit release of Windows XP, but seems focused on the long-promised "Longhorn" release of Windows, and has a couple of strange paragraphs claiming that the Longhorn flavor Windows Explorer can provide much of the search capabilities of the oft-promised (but not included in Longhorn) WinFS database-as-file-system:
The various transparencies, shading, and richer animation capabilities of Longhorn's graphical interface that will be featured in the demo are not glitz for glitz's sake, because these improvements are designed to help users to "collect, organize, and visualize data in a way that is not possible today,"
Uh, hunh.
I don't think this column is coincidentally timed with the release this Friday of "Tiger," Apple's latest OS X version 10.4, including the built-in "Spotlight" desktop search feature. Can't wait to see how Tiger delivers!
10:30:24 AM
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Sunday, April 24, 2005 |
Scripting News asks You think?. Steve Gillmor: "I'm really suffering from Post Gillmor Gang Disorder." Dave Winer responds: "Tell me something I didn't know. ";->"Note to universe. Please get Steve and his pals back on the air. I'm suffering."
Same here. These guys are good. The final session, with Dan Bricklin, was tops. Hope they get the chance to try to top it.
1:37:24 PM
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Andrew MacNeill asks Isn't Source Control part of programming 101 yet?
Source code control, change management, modeling, testing and project planning are skills that distinguish professional programmers from "coders." When the PC revolution displaced the entrenched bureaucracy of the mainframe and mini computer of the "Data Processing Department," there were lots of babies thrown out with the bathwater. Every Tom, Jane or Mary who could code a macro in 1-2-3 then worked out hex codes for 132-column print, batch files, then created dBASE tables. One day they were brave enough to try to change the printer ribbon, the next they are writing multi-tier, distributed, transactional, multilingual applications. So, many folks didn't have the advantage of computer science training that teaches methodical software development. The last twenty years has been a thrashing attempt to bring back the reliability (without the cost and time delay) of committee-driven waterfall development methodologies in a Rapid Application Development, Extreme Programming, Cyclic Development or another Personal Software Process.
One of the many ugly truths that IT doesn't like to admit is that most of the folks out there delivering applications are amateurs. It's why, in 1997, I presented "It's the Process, Stupid!." Because there is not one "generally accepted practice" of software development, there are huge variations in the amount of care, professionalism and engineering that's brought to bear on software development tasks. In many of the shops I consult with, the line workers often know there ought to be a better way, but getting middle- and upper-management buy-in to invest in tools and training is difficult. Solo practitioners are on their own to work it all out. Some fly by the seat of their pants and get away with it; others dive in too deep and get bogged down with complexities of managing the tools. Another bunch decide against anything Not Invented Here and whip up their own source code control techniques, making daily ZIP files and hoping to add the right arguments to their copy commands. Rarely do these tools support branching, labeling, rollback, point-at-time images, reporting or the other key SCC features.
SCC may be part of Programming 101 now, but when did your client take the course?
12:58:23 PM
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Saturday, April 23, 2005 |
Scripting News points to David Weinberger's post on doing 90-second blurbs on "the blogosphere" for MSNBC: David Weinberger: "I quit."
and "I'm in the blogosphere to escape from this degradation of values."
Excellent and insightful post. If the topics of blogs vs. mainstream media (the insiders are abbreviating it MSM in some of the posts), follow a few of the links for some thoughtful back-and-forth, I think Jeff Jarvis nails it: "Blogs don't need mainstream media. Mainstream media needs blogs."
11:02:40 AM
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Friday, April 22, 2005 |
OSNews also points to Linux Insider: How Linux Saved Microsoft. "Rob Enderle has an commentary at LinuxInsider discussing the effect Linux has had on Microsoft. An excerpt: "As I look at how Microsoft is changing to address the Linux threat, one that may actually turn out to be no more real then Netscape's was, I can't help but see how Microsoft has dramatically benefited from it -- and much more broadly so than they did from the rise of Netscape."
I think Enderle is right on when he talks about the effect that Open Source is having with Microsoft. "Competition breeds Innovation." However, I think he falls off the deep end in his last section "False Threat?" where he tries to explain what Open Source is.
... "open source" which, in turn, is based on a false concept. This concept is that people actually want to look at source code. No, it's that people want the security of knowing that the code is there for a community to maintain, support and enhance, that a monopolistic code owner can't take away the freedom to run the code they have.
Finally, we know that what is largely holding the open-source community together is a dislike for Microsoft. Little holds the community together! :) But the individuals who choose Open Source each choose it for their own reasons, often freedom of choice, freedom to experiment, freedom to extend, integrate, modify and hack together the solution to their own problem. It's not about Microsoft, nor Computer Associates, nor IBM, nor any other one target.
... unless something dramatically changes, by 2015 we'll be largely wondering what all the fuss surrounding Linux was really about. Perhaps, Rob. See you in 2015 and we can compare notes.
1:45:03 PM
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OSNews points to a Fortune magazine story Microsoft's New Mantra: 'It Just Works'. "Microsoft's Jim Allchin says that the number one design goal for Longhorn has been: "it just works." In other words, a lot of the fiddly, annoying tasks that computer users have become accustomed to (or never quite got the hang of) such as searching for files, defragmenting, changing network configurations, and tweaking security settings, will happen automatically."
It's an interesting piece, especially reading between the lines on the marketing message Allchin is trying to deliver. Microsoft has at least another year before they deliver the OS they have been talking about for a long, long time. Watch how the message changes.
1:36:45 PM
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Thursday, April 21, 2005 |
Ars System Guide: April 2005 edition. "For the true PC enthusiast, nothing beats building your own system. Enter the Ars Technica System Guide. It covers every component you'll need to build (or upgrade) your system, from the RAM to the power supply. The April 2005 guide sees some serious updates from the last time we did this. Most importantly, we go 64-bit across the board. That's right [~] even the Budget Box gets a heaping spoonful of 64-bit loving from us. And there's more... read on to find out what's new." By news@arstechnica.com (Ars Technica).
Three remarkable systems, all 64-bit, priced around $800, $1500 and $10,000. Check 'em out.
9:27:00 PM
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Wednesday, April 20, 2005 |
PEBCAK: Problem Exists Between Chair and Keyboard.
Check. Spent way too long trying to figure out why a machine would not communicate with an UPS, no matter what the settings. Varied everything. Checked the BIOS. Tried a different driver. RTFM. RTF-FAQs. Searched the mailing list archives. Googled everything I could think of. Finally pulled the cable and tried the tests again. Same result. Doh. Serial ports blown. Darn hardware.
9:45:02 PM
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Tuesday, April 19, 2005 |
I've become a big fan of SSH for creating secure tunnels to remote clients. Using the port redirection facilities of SSH, you can remotely access databases, web servers and other services without exposing the services themselves to the Internet. SSH also includes support for remote file transfer to let you download data from a client or upload a new script.
While single files are easy from the command line, a two-pane file manager interface is easier for more complex tasks. WinSCP works well in this role for Windows clients and is licensed under the GPL. Yesterday, I trolled around a bit and found fugu for Mac OS X, a similar interface, licensed under a BSD-like interface. Both make file transfer a snap.
4:07:48 PM
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Monday, April 18, 2005 |
NUT, the Network UPS tools, consists of three small programs that run interdependently: the driver for the particular UPS, which understands the protocol it speaks, the upsd daemon, which communicates with the driver and responds to client requests, and the client software, which can reside locally or remotely. Having three separate tools provides great flexibility: several low-power devices can share one UPS and listen to the one daemon. One daemon can maintain communication with several UPS drivers. Clients are available on multiple platforms for interoperability. Elegant and simple design. Visit the home page at http://www.networkupstools.org/
UPDATE: A handy reference for installing and configuring NUT so that it automatically starts on bootup of OS X: http://www.llondel.org/ups.shtml
2:09:15 PM
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Sunday, April 17, 2005 |
Slashdot points to a disturbing survey on Toms hardware showing that only 24% of corporate computers running XP have been patched to the latest version. It is worrisome that so many people have to work on machines with known exploits.
7:45:21 PM
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Cleaning out the basement, I came across a Dell Latitude XP 4100CX: a 486/100 with 24 Mb RAM and 500 Mb HDD, and a tiny color screen. Hard as it is to believe, Linux will run on this, too. Found instructions on how to proceed without a CD-ROM drive here: http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/network-install.html
Remarkable.
7:42:22 PM
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Saturday, April 16, 2005 |
Ars Technica] points to "A questionable study says that Americans see blogging as a kind of journalism, but at the same time, they seem to have issues trusting blogs. This sounds like a great time to spin the censorship issue!" The idea that they don't know what they are, but they wanted them censored is deeply troubling.
7:59:09 PM
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Friday, April 15, 2005 |
I've spent some spare time this week cleaning up a relative's computer. The machine is a few years old, and he was afraid it was due for replacement as it had been running slower and slower and seemed to have "funny" troubles. Yep, you guessed it - malware.
In Ed Foster's Gripelog this week, Ed points to a site that dissects what happens when you agree to install an innocent-looking screensaver. Check out the screenshots and EULAs of the product - and the products that it installs, and the products that those install, and so forth. The junk brought this PIII-500 to its knees. This stuff ought to be illegal. And that they have the gall to hide behind a click-though license is despicable.
Read Ed Foster's column here: Spyware and the Ghost of UCITA. "While we tend to think of UCITA as being dead outside of a few jurisdictions,..."
2:31:47 PM
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Thursday, April 14, 2005 |
Garrett Fitzgerald pointed out the site OptOutPreScreen.com which supposedly will get you off the credt-card-offer-each-week merry-go-round. I'd welcome that. But Ed Foster voices his concerns in OptoutPrescreen.com's Privacy Policy that not all of the subscribers to this site might respect your wishes - but they will use the personally identifiable information you supply. Ed concludes:
But doesn't it strike you that there's something very bass-ackwards about this process? Why should we have to opt out at all from having sensitive information shared with every two-bit loan shark that's willing to pay the credit report companies for it? In this era of rampant identity theft, it just shouldn't work that way.
9:03:37 AM
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Wednesday, April 13, 2005 |
OSNews posts Linux Can't Kill Windows. "One fundamental difference guarantees that Windows will continue to dominate says Tom Yager." I've enjoyed Tom's editorials on the back page of InfoWorld for the last year. This isn't a flame. I'll be interested on seeing where Tom is going with this - an editorial with a "continued next episode" teaser.
9:49:55 PM
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Tuesday, April 12, 2005 |
Computerworld News reports Microsoft releases patches for 18 separate flaws. "Microsoft today released eight security bulletins detailing fixes for 18 separate vulnerabilities affecting a wide range of its software products."
Youch! Patch quick, patch often. This RSS Feed (readable in a browser) points out updates for Exchange Server, MSN Messenger, Windows, and Office (Word 2000, 2002, 2003, Works - a Critical Update). You'll also want to review http://www.microsoft.com/security. Regularly.
The security bulletins seem to be numbered MS05-016 through -023. It's only week 16 of 2005. Looks like it could be a rough year for Microsoft.
7:29:10 PM
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Monday, April 11, 2005 |
Dan Gillmor on Grassroots Journalism, Etc. notes "They've been AWOL so far, but finally some Big Media companies are coming to the legal defense (Silicon Valley Watcher) of the Web publishers Apple is suing for reporting "trade secrets" in recent months. I suspect this is because the judge in the case dodged the question of whether the site owners were journalists in the first place. ... As I noted before, the ruling was a direct shot at the process of journalism in California. I'm glad to see that the big journalism organizations have understood the stakes -- and are acting on that."
2:06:44 PM
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Sunday, April 10, 2005 |
OSNews speculates Longhorn Delayed Again - Who Wins?. "In the last few weeks, the tech industry has been buzzing with speculation that Microsoft's next OS release, Longhorn, will not be ready for its planned 2006 unveiling. If the OS is put off until 2007, some competitors could win more profits, but many analysts say that software and hardware partners will face the most serious challenges and could end up losing more than they anticipated."
The folks who coined the nickname "LongWait" might be proven right. If true, it could have good and bad effects. SysAdmins in the middle of a WinXP rollout will breathe a sigh of relief that they might get a break. OTOH, the claim that using a proprietary operating system gives you any more secure and reliable a roadmap than using free products might finally be put to a well-deserved rest. Planning based on vaporware, free or not, is risky. And buying one-year subscriptions with "guaranteed" upgrades is just a fool's game.
9:53:25 AM
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Saturday, April 9, 2005 |
Dan Bricklin's Log asks Are bloggers journalists? Looking to history. "There has been a lot written about Apple going after bloggers and the question about whether or not bloggers have the same protections that journalists do. I just saw a little different answer... My next door neighbor Chris Daly is an Associate Professor who teaches journalism at Boston University. Previously, he has been the New England correspondent for the Washington Post, a features writer, and an AP editor. On the web he is best known as the main idea person behind the old Good Documents website that I created back in 1999 that was quite popular at Netscape and around the web."
"He just weighed in with an essay titled "Are Bloggers Journalists? Let's Ask Thomas Jefferson". I found his perspectives helpful."
Read Dan's commentary here, including links to the original essay.
I thought the distinction between reporting and journalism was an important one - the former one is "just the facts" while the latter includes opinion enforced by facts.
10:17:24 AM
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From Paul Thurrott WinInfo Short Takes: Week of April 11:
My guess is that you're going to hear a lot more about this case in the weeks ahead. The short version goes like this: Microsoft sued an Ohio college student last year for selling two pieces of unused Microsoft software on eBay. Microsoft has won numerous cases like this in the past by default (who wants to square off against Goliath?), but University of Akron student David Zamos decided to fight back. He won-- or at least settled after Microsoft realized the danger--but there's a lesson to be learned from this story. Zamos argued, quite effectively, that he couldn't agree to Microsoft's sales and licensing terms because the company wraps its End User License Agreement (EULA) inside the unopened software. I expect this bit of legal chicanery to be tested again in the future. In the meantime, this is a bellwether case that all Microsoft customers should be aware of. The "Cleveland Scene" ran the full, and interesting, story:
http://list.windowsitpro.com/t?ctl=719D:2280B
I've always wondered what would happen if I bought a name-brand box for the hardware and tried to sell of the pieces I didn't want. What kind of obligations are you under for the physical parts of your purchase? Can you sell off the sound card? The CD drive? The manuals? How about the CDs for the software you don't use, don't start and don't break the shrink-wrap on?
9:45:55 AM
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Friday, April 8, 2005 |
Slashdot reports "Simon (S2) writes "Ubuntu Linux 5.04, code name 'Hoary Hedgehog', is now available. It offers the following new features: Simple and fast Installation, live CD's for Intel x86, AMD64 and PPC, GNOME 2.10.1, Firefox 1.0.2, first class productivity software, and X.org 6.8.2." It goes on to suggest "Read the announcement and the complete release notes." Of course, now that it's been posted on Slashdot, you might want to wait for their web server to stop glowing red. What you don't want to wait for is the BitTorrent feeds. They are running pretty fast (BitTorrent gain speed with more file sharers on line). Slashdot features a set of quick links to the torrents for the US crowd (others should check http://www.ubuntulinux.org/download/).
2:07:10 PM
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Thursday, April 7, 2005 |
Andrew MacNeill - AKSEL Solutions blogs Windows 2003 SP1 problems continue for others as well. "As a self-employed consultant, I've got better things to do with my time than troubleshoot server problems."
Oliver Rist, in Infoworld's Enterprise Watch column writes "Now Microsoft releases the much-anticipated Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1. SBS 2003 happens to be partially based on Win2K3 code, although much of it also [sigma] isn't. Win2K3 Server SP1 suddenly shows up on your SUS/WSUS update list. You put two and four together, come up with six-point-something, and decide to deploy the patch... Pow! You've got problems. A short list includes your fax services failing, your DHCP probably keeling over dead, your Change IP Address tool collapsing in a smoking pile of goo, and any reinstallations of critical components becoming suddenly akin to slamming your forehead into the front grill of a Dodge Ram pickup."
Sure glad all my servers are running Red Hat and Fedora Core...
2:33:49 PM
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OSNews is reporting Fewer permissions are key to Longhorn security. "Software engineers who attend Microsoft's annual Windows Hardware Engineering Conference later this month could get their first taste of a new Windows user permissions model that could change the way thousands of programs are developed and run. But as the company prepares for the final Longhorn development push, questions remain about its plans for a new user privileges model called Least-Privilege User Account, or LUA."
Man, yet another security model! Systems Engineers struggled mightily with the Windows Domain Model and then Active Directory. I wonder how many more iterations Microsoft will go through before things settle down. Computers are such an infant industry when compared to construction or manufacturing. And even in those industries, its really only in the last century that science and engineering (helped, ironically, by the computer) has brought enough precision to the process to improve the success rate of large building projects and streamline the raw-materials-to-delivered-goods process with JIT and EDI. It will be a long time, I'm afraid, until computers reach that level of maturity. In the meantime, we have to look forward to churn and relearn, new 'paradigms' (ugh!) and models.
From Structured Programming and Object-Oriented Programming through Service Oriented Architecture, Extreme Programming and Model Driven Architecture, new models are being tossed around daily. A few rise to the level of popularity to make the buzz, sell a bunch of books and fewer still contribute a bit to the science of computer science, So many appear like last year's diet craze, embarrassing to recall. Empty promises written by marketeers oversold the software, promising impossible returns on investment. Fred Brooks wrote the definitive conclusion nearly thirty years ago: There are no silver bullets.
What I do see working, out here in the real world, is that evolution works better than revolution. Sure, a few projects achieve amazing success with the latest new whiz-bang tool of the day, but for the vast majority of developers in the trenches, there is a slow accumulation of knowledge and wisdom of best practices that filter out from the few manic successes (and less talked about, but far more common, down-in-flames failures). New tools and techniques work best when introduced into existing systems side-by-side, so practitioners can compare-and-contrast, mastering the new systems at their own pace (while waiting for version 3 or service pack 1), picking up the good parts of "the way we've always done things" and matching them with the good parts of the new tools and techniques. Different shops need to evolve at different paces. Shops working in industries with long turnover cycles can take decades, where cutting-edge shops working with highly competitive customers can take months. Revolution means starting over, rewriting all the rules from scratch. No matter how insanely great a new tool, it still takes 5 years to gain the 5 years of experience all the want ads are looking for. It takes a major development effort and a deployment and an update and a redeployment and a wave of new machines and a few major changes before you know how a toolset can handle the entire software development life cycle. A demo with two notebooks on a stage does not a robust system make.
Microsoft wants to start over with a new security model? It took until Windows 95 for the Win31 model to mature, and until WinXP for the WinNT model to be complete. Third time's the charm?
9:45:47 AM
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Wednesday, April 6, 2005 |
I posted a comment to Andrew MacNeill - AKSEL Solutions asking if he had solved his problem with Windows Server 2003 Service PACK 1. He posts: The result of Windows 2003 SP1. "Well Ted, all I can say is I'm still running Windows 2003, but not SP1. Many people have offered suggestions and I'm reading other ideas but I'm staying away from Windows 2003 Service Pack 1. At least until I have nothing better to do with my weekend...."
"And to make matters worse, a bunch of my clients, who manage their own servers AND THOSE who have it hosted, experienced emails problems from Oct 31 - today. Coincidence? I'm not sure. While I wouldn't blame Microsoft, some of my customers are immediately blaming their lack of server software on the big guy."
They might be suffering from the recent Poisoning of Microsoft DNS Servers - this sounds like it could be a nasty one - or the new exploit to the WINS server patch issued last year. I noticed a real tapering off in email, ham and spam, in the last week. I wonder if something else is going on...
9:18:34 PM
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The Dartmouth - Lake Sunapee Linux User Group, a chapter of the Greater New Hampshire Linux User Group will meet on Thursday, April 7th, 7:00-9:00PM at Dartmouth College, Carson Hall Room L02 to hear Peter Nikolaidis present "Open Source E-Commerce with Interchange"
According to the website, "Interchange is an open source alternative to commercial commerce servers and application server/component applications. Interchange is one of the most powerful tools available to automate and database-enable your web site or build online applications. The talk will cover the basics of installing and configuring the software, as well as some demonstrations of existing sites running on Interchange."
The Python Special Interest Group will be meeting before the main meeting at Everything But Anchovies, 603-643-6135, 5 Allen St Hanover, NH 03755, US at 5:30 PM to hear from the several Granite Staters who went to the Python conference in Washington, D.C.
The DLSLUG announcement email list is here, main web site here and the Greater New Hampshire Linux User Group here.
9:58:05 AM
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Tuesday, April 5, 2005 |
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Monday, April 4, 2005 |
I had problems on my systems in January with the MySQL MyODBC driver version 3.51.10, and I ended up rolling back to version 3.51.09, as I posted to the Fox Wiki here, the Leafe.com ProFox forums here and the MySQL Forums here. Remarkably, I didn't blog it also, but I was busy.
The good news is that the new driver, version 3.51.11-1, seems to fix the problem. Rolling back to the old driver also required additional work to use a weaker password technique, so this is a welcome fix!
3:12:15 PM
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On Paul McNett's Weblog, Paul blogs:
Twenty minutes later and I'm logged in to my new install - no GUI as this is a pure server box... and 10 minutes later my system is completely up to date... and about an hour later I have myself the beginnings of a killer server. And I still haven't had to compile a single thing. This is really sweet, the best experience I've had yet getting a server up and running.
Read more at Ubuntu Server Success!
12:41:20 PM
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The Central New Hampshire Linux User Group (CentraLUG) holds free meetings that educate computer hobbyists and professionals alike about Linux, Open Source Software and Linux-related technologies. The monthly meeting will be held on April 4th at the New Hampshire Technical Institute Library in Concord, room 146 from 7 pm to 9 pm. Meetings are open to the public. Details and directions at http://www.centralug.org.
This month, Bill Sconce will debrief his trip to Washington DC and report on Python Conference happenings and prognostications: new projects, show-and-tell, an outlook for Python 3.0, one difference between Python and Perl and more! Ed Lawson will present Scribus, an Open Source desktop publishing system. An open question and answer session will be held -- bring your Linux questions!
9:35:40 AM
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Sunday, April 3, 2005 |
Scripting News points out "Why Darren Barefoot isn't smoking the podcasting dope."
I'm holding off on getting into audiocasting myself. Unlike text, you don't have the ability to compress, skim, index and cross-reference (although metadata will help those last items) and you have to devote 1:1 time to consume it. I can power-skim 500 articles in the news aggregator in a few minutes, dipping in and out of articles of interest, skipping to the bottom of the list or searching for a keyword or phrase with Apple/Control-F.
7:37:32 PM
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On Slashdot, Python Moving into the Enterprise. Qa1 writes "Seems that Python is moving into the enterprise. At the recent PyCon it has become apparent that it's not just Google, GIS, Nokia or even Microsoft anymore. The article points out that Python is increasingly becoming a perfectly viable and even preferred choice for the enterprise. More and more companies are looking at Python as a good alternative to past favorites like Java. Will we finally be able to code for living in a language that's not painful? Exciting times!"
I knew several attendees at PyCon, although I was tied up that week (teaching MySQL) and couldn't make it. Ed Leafe, former FoxPro MVP and host of several great email and web forums at http://leafe.com, presented the promising business development framework dabo. The Greater New Hampshire Linux User Group is building up a Python SIG (developers on all platforms welcomed) and will be holding debriefing sessions about the conference as part of meetings state-wide.
7:18:00 PM
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Saturday, April 2, 2005 |
"When they hear "world domination'', they don't hear the irony, and thus tend to write us off as nutcases or flakes. That's good; it gives us time and room to blindside them."
Eric S. Raymond
http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/3676
10:00:38 AM
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Friday, April 1, 2005 |
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