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Ted's Radio Weblog
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Monday, October 31, 2005 |
David Stevenson announces FoxTalk gets a new editor. "Foxtalk will have a new editor, beginning with the upcoming December issue, and I'm happy to announce that Rainer Becker is the man for the job."
Congratulations to Rainer on getting an exciting new job, and to David for a job well done these past 18 months!
3:07:39 PM 
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Sunday, October 30, 2005 |
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Saturday, October 29, 2005 |
The Python Special Interest Group (http://www.pysig.org), a chapter of the Greater New Hampshire Linux User Group (http://www.gnhlug.org) had it's monthly meeting last Thursday at the Amoskeag Business Incubator in Manchester, NH.
Kent Johnson put on a very good presentation and demonstration of Jython, complete with working demos, sample code and handouts. Everyone from novice to journeyman practitioner walked away with a better appreciation of what Jython is (simplifying, a Python interpreter/runtime written in Java) and what it isn't, when to use it (working in a Java environment or wanting to use Java-based library functions). Great job, Kent! I've posted some notes from the meeting as well as Kent's notes to the PySIG wiki at http://www.pysig.org/pywiki/PyNotes20051027.
Nearly a dozen people attended at the Amoskeag Business Incubator (thanks to them for the free space and projector), including new attendees brought in by Bill Sconce's recent appearance at the ACM/IEEE seminar series and from my posts to the SwaNH lists. See, PR works!
5:22:56 PM
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Friday, October 28, 2005 |
Bill McGonigle, over at Resigned to the Bittersweet Truth, blogs, "Automatic updates are the only rational approach for most businesses in today’s world of 24/7 Internet connectivity, malware and 0-day vulnerabilities..." read the entire post here.
11:06:06 AM
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On his Hentzenwerke Publishing website, Whil Hentzen says, "Reserve April 21-24, 2006 for a trip to Milwaukee. That's all I can say right now. Trust me."
Yeah, right. Wonder what he's up to...
I'll bet April in Milwaukee is almost as nice as the Novembers we've spent there at GLGDW...
11:00:41 AM
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Slashdot post: MS Office 12 To Utilize ODF?. J. Random Luser writes "Groklaw is carrying a story about Microsoft quietly engaging a French company to develop Open Document filters for Office 12, due out mid-2006. The SourceForge project claims to be an import filter for MS Office, and that is how the developer describes it. But ZDNet quotes Ray Ozzie as talking about an export filter from MS Office, and this french blog takes Ozzie at his word. Ostensibly the tarball unpacks as OpenOfficePlugin, and SourceForge has the WindowsInstaller.msi listed as 'platform independent'." From the ZDNet article: "Ozzie told me that supporting ODF in Office isn't a matter of principle. Microsoft isn't opposed to supporting other formats. The company just announced support for PDF, and he added that the Open Office XML format has an 'extremely liberal' license."
Follow-up: Check out the weasly words in Microsoft's denial: "We have no plans to directly support the OpenDocument format at this time," I suppose that leaves open the back door of "indirectly supporting" by paying a third-party to write an import/export filter.
David Berlind follows up with long but insightful piece, "Hidden OpenDocument agenda uncovered in Massachusetts" concluding with the words, "If that's not enough for Microsoft, then one can only assume that some other agenda is indeed in play. Just not the one that has so far been implicated."
9:51:33 AM
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Rick Schummer, over at Shedding Some Light warns: Epson - you are on your last strike... "I really hate hardware. Yes, I have said this a million times, and I mean it. I hate recommending it, I hate buying it, I hate shopping for it, and I hate the fact that I need it to so the thing I love doing every day, which is creating software. OK, a million and four times."
"So what the heck is the deal with "disposable printers"? I hate it. At least the US$300 HP InkJet printer I purchased years ago lasted several years. Maybe this is better though as I get the same life out of my US$300 bucks and get newer and better features each time."
Well, that and a lot of aggravation. Like leasing cars at ridiculously low rates only to screw the consumer at turn-in time, print manufacturers have figured out they can sell flimsy printers at next-to-nothing costs, wear down the consumer with overpriced (and proprietary and DRMed) consumables (why is it printers always die when you have a new cartridge?) and then let the cheap plastic chassis die a quick death. Who loses? The consumer, who's computer always dies at the worst possible minute, whose new software is likely 91% compatible, and whose toxic waste dump is filling up with this junk.
"A strange game. The only winning move is not to play." My time and energy is worth a heck of a lot more. I'd look for a medium-duty office printer rather than the bargain-of-the-week, and check some comparative reviews to ensure the complete cost, including consumables over the life of the printer, are reasonable. However, it's been a couple of years since I've shopped for a printer. Are there any good bargains left out there? Not the $49 give-away-the-razor and gouge-em-on-blades bargains, but real bargains?
9:39:26 AM
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Thursday, October 27, 2005 |
The NYT > Home Page reports AT&T Lives On as New Buyer Adopts Brand Name. "SBC Communications, which is awaiting regulatory approval to buy AT&T, announced today that it will adopt the AT&T name once the acquisition is approved." By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS.
So, the U.S. government split "The Phone Company" into little bits that have each grown separately and now merge back into a super-conglomerate again. Some may see this as a waste of money. Others think that the boom in cellular, VOIP, DSL, broadband and other innovations has moved far more quickly with more competition in the marketplace. I'm in the second camp.
10:18:40 AM
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Wednesday, October 26, 2005 |
Slashdot has its monthly feeding frenzy over the Netcraft numbers: Apache Webserver Surpasses 50 Million Website Mark. chris81 writes "For the first time ever, the Apache Web Server is powering more than 50 million websites, according to Netcraft's Web Server Survey for October. Although relative share fell by 0.67 percent, the total number of sites powered by Apache grew to over 52 million. Microsoft's IIS finished second with more than 15 million sites served."
11:11:04 AM
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Tuesday, October 25, 2005 |
Well, Hentzenwerke Publishing has announced Tamar E. Granor and della Martin's latest work, "Taming Visual FoxPro SQL: Real World Data Solutions in VFP," available for purchase and download (in PDF format) from the Hentzewerke site. Follow the link above for more information, a table of contents, sample chapter (not yet posted) and ordering information. Looking forward to reading this one. Whil Hentzen writes,
"You know how once in a while you run into a book that grows on you - each time you read it, there seems to be more in there than the last time you picked it up?... 152 pages of sheer delight. For us programming types, at least. "
2:14:23 PM
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Stephen J. Vaughan-Nichols is not well-known as a Microsoft fan; on the contrary, he tends to be one of their outspoken critics. So, I was pleased when I saw him praise Microsoft in his recent eWeek opinion column:
I haven't been a big fan of personal database programs for a long time now. The only one out there these days that I care for at all is Microsoft's Visual FoxPro. Yes, I can say good things about Microsoft products—when they really are good.
9:32:24 AM
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Monday, October 24, 2005 |
The Latest Updates from MySQL AB RSS Feed notes MySQL 5.0 Now Available for Production Use. "MySQL AB today announced the general availability of MySQL 5.0, the most significant product upgrade in the company's ten-year history. The major new version delivers advanced SQL standard-compliant features such as stored procedures, triggers, views & new pluggable storage engines. Over 30 enterprise platform and tool vendors have also expressed enthusiastic support for the new release of the world's most popular open source database."
10:20:48 AM
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Saturday, October 22, 2005 |
OSNews notes After 12 Years of Work, WINE is Going Beta. "After roughly 12 years of work, the Wine Project is about to take its widely used Windows translation layer to a place it has not been in all that time: beta. Wine Project leader Alexandre Julliard, who has worked on the software nearly since its beginning in 1993 and maintained it since 1994, said in an interview yesterday that the beta release is "a matter of days away." He has since updated that forecast and said it would be released on Tuesday, October 25th."
A remarkable platform, WINE Is Not an Emulator, but rather a thin layer that maps Win32 calls to matching Linux calls, running some applications even faster than on their native OS. Note that Visual FoxPro is a popular item in the Application Database, named to the Top 10 Silver List.
12:05:30 PM
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Thursday, October 20, 2005 |
 Last OSNews post for the morning, I promise! They report Firefox Sees 100 Millionth Download. "Just shy of Firefox's first birthday party, the Mozilla Foundation celebrated the 100 millionth download of its Web browser Wednesday. "This is a great milestone. Our massive, worldwide community of grassroots marketers and users - not to mention the developers - have helped to put out a product that's really kicking butt," said Asa Dotzler, the Mozilla liaison to the SpreadFirefox community."
10:41:15 AM
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OSNews notes Ubuntu 5.10 Server Released. "The Ubuntu team is proud to announce Ubuntu 5.10 Server, the first release of Ubuntu designed especially for server environments. Like the standard desktop Ubuntu, it occupies a single CD. However, it is distinguished by the following features: Includes server-oriented kernels with out-of-the-box automatic support for multiprocessor systems; Includes a wide variety of popular server applications such as apache, mysql, postgresql, php, zope, openldap, bind, samba, and more." Visit the OSNews site for links to download the CD image for PowerPC, i386 and AMD64.
Ubuntu has taken the world by storm, recently highlighted as the Desktop OS of choice in Linux Journal poll. I've been impressed with the Debian-based distribution. It will be interesting to see what innovations they bring to their server version.
10:05:54 AM
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OSNews reports OpenOffice.org 2.0 Released to Servers. "OpenOffice.org 2.0 has been silently released to servers. It can be found here. OpenOffice.org is a multiplatform and multilingual office suite and an open-source project. Compatible with all other major office suites, the product is free to download, use, and distribute."
UPDATED: BitTorrent links here
If you evaluated OpenOffice.org 1.1.x and felt it wasn't ready just yet, give this new version a try. They improvements are remarkable. This is an office suite suitable for 95% of home and office workers. (I have used OpenOffice exclusively for over a year.)
If you offer custom applications to your clients that integrate or automate MS Office or WordPerfect, take a look at what would be involved in bringing in OpenOffice.org as another alternative. Your clients can obtain OO.o for free, and your application can offer many powerful new features.
9:59:44 AM
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Saturday, October 15, 2005 |
The Nashua chapter of the Greater New Hampshire Linux User Group meets the third Thursday of each month at Martha's Exchange, Main Street Nashua. Dinner starts at 6 PM (pay for your own), the presentation starts upstairs at 7:30.
This months meeting on the 20th of October will have Ken D'Ambrosio showing OpenVPN, an open source solution to remote secure access to a network. OpenVPN runs on Windows, Linux, *BSD, OS X and Solaris. From their web page:
"OpenVPN implements OSI layer 2 or 3 secure network extension using the industry standard SSL/TLS protocol, supports flexible client authentication methods based on certificates, smart cards, and/or 2-factor authentication, and allows user or group-specific access control policies using firewall rules applied to the VPN virtual interface. OpenVPN is not a web application proxy and does not operate through a web browser."
Sounds like a meeting not to miss!
3:12:47 PM
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Friday, October 14, 2005 |
Ubuntu Linux 5.10 (that's a Year-Month versioning scheme) code-named "Breezy Badger" has been released. Join the BitTorrents for a speedy download. Versions for i386, AMD64, PowerPC both live and install are available. Key features include a recent kernel (2.6.12.6), GNOME, Xorg, improved drivers and hardware compatibility and beta 2 of OpenOffice.org 2.0. Also included is a server configuration with support for LTSP (the Linux Terminal Server Project), NFS support and more. Check it out!
10:12:17 AM
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Thursday, October 13, 2005 |
Tonight at the MonadLUG meeting, I will present "The Open CD" a CD to share with family and friends. It has Windows-readable and -runnable binaries including FireFox, OpenOffice.org, Thunderbird, 7-Zip, Audacity, Battle for Wesnoth, Gaim, Celestia, GIMP, Notepad2, PDFCreator, Really Slick Screensaveers, NVU, Sokoban and TuxPaint. It also includes the texts "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" and "Open Sources." If booted, the CD runs a LiveCD version of Ubuntu. It's a powerful tool to convince family, friends, clients and perfect strangers to try out F/OSS.
Download your copy from http://www.theopencd.org/ or come to the MonadLUG meeting tonight where I will have copies to give away.
The Monadnock Linux User Group (MonadLUG) meets the second Thursday or each month at 7:00pm at the SAU 1 Superintendent's Office behind South Meadow School in Peterborough, New Hampshire. Details, directions and lots more information are available at the Greater New Hampshire Linux User Group web site.
3:46:29 PM
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The Python Special Interest Group ("PySIG") of the Greater New Hampshire Linux User Group meets the fourth Thursday of each month at the Amoskeag Business Incubator in Manchester at 7 PM.
This month, the meeting will take place on Thursday, 27 October 2005 and will feature a presentation on Jython by KentJohnson.
"Kent is soliciting suggestions for specific topics (on the PySIG mailing list). In the meantime here's a synopsis about Jython in the large from the project's home page: http://www.jython.org/docs/whatis.html. Jython should be of interest to anyone who uses or wants to know about either Python or Java. I particularly like the "typically 2-10X shorter" part, having worked on Java projects in a former life..." -- Bill Sconce, PySIG coordinator
12:01:17 PM
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Wednesday, October 12, 2005 |
Jeremy Zawody blogs "Oracle buys Innobase. MySQL between rock and hard place?"
Ow. InnoBase is currently the data storage engine of choice when using the MySQL engine. (Unlike most RDBMSes, MySQL can plug into several storage engines, like MyISAM, Cluster and Archive, to provide performance and features tuned for the application.) While Oracle can't "take away" the Gnu Public Licensed code in current use, they can negotiate difficult terms for MySQL AB to continue offering commercial products. It's time for the MySQL AB team to look for a new storage engine.
The Motley Fool's analysis: "Oracle Goes for the Kill." Red Herring sees "Oracle Acquires Innobase" as just the 11th acquisition this year, and possibly for a low-end entry-level tool for the Oracle DB. It will be interesting to see how Oracle proceeds.
1:57:38 PM
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Microsoft Watch from Mary Jo Foley reports Win2K Users Beware. "Of the 14 vulnerabilities for which Microsoft issued patches on the latest Patch Tuesday, one is especially important: a newly discovered Windows 2000 worm hole."
The worm hole episode on STNG was one of my favorites!
12:18:12 PM
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