Over at Ars Technica, Eric Bangeman posts US residents like DSL better than cable. "Broadband adoption continues to climb slowly, and now the question is which form consumers prefer, cable or DSL?" Interesting results. I'm not sure all that many people have the choice, with the requirement that DSL must be installed within a certain distance of a "central office" (CO). We have cable internet for our recreational surfing and hobbies, and business DSL for the home office. The business DSL is slower. Both have been remarkably solid (knock wood). Front-line tech support for both has been clueless, but when you get to a real tech, I've been dealt with promptly, knowledgeably and courteously. Pricing is unfortunately not a differentiator as both the local cable and incumbent telephone have no (wired) competition, and satellite doesn't seem practical.
11:03:44 AM comment []
Beta-testing the "Flight 5" beta of "Dapper Drake" (gotta love the code names!) of Kubuntu (the KDE variant of Ubuntu) and I wanted to print some business cards using the awesome glabels program. My printer is an HP OfficeJet d145 using the optional HP jetDirect 200m network print server. While the distro does support and recognize the JetDirect standard, my particular printer model isn't on the supplied (and extensive!) printer list. A quick Google points to the printer definition file at LinuxPrinting.org. Start the print dialogs with System. Administration, Printing off the menu, specify the JetDirect interface and IP address, and pick "Install" to specify the printer model. A couple more clicks and a test page prints successfully. Awesome! Hi-res color printing, support for the network interface, the duplexer and all. How hard can it be?
10:19:59 AM comment []
Ed Leafe announced today: "The Dabo Runtime Engine for Windows is a self-contained environment that allows you to run Dabo on Windows without having to first install all of the requirements. It comes with its own version of Python 2.4.2, wxPython 2.6.3.0, MySQLdb 1.2.0, kinterbasdb 3.2.0a1, ReportLab v.2463, and several other modules used in Dabo."
Check out dabo at http://www.dabodev.com. Dabo is a rich-client application framework for data-centric applications. Written in Python, it provides multiple database support, WinTel, MacOSX, Linux front ends, and some remarkable capabilities. While the entire dabo projects is at version 0.6.2, Ed says that the visual tools are around 0.5 while the actual framework is 1.0+.
8:58:21 AM comment []
The monthly meeting of CentraLUG, the Concord/Central New Hampshire chapter of the Greater New Hampshire Linux Users Group, occurs on the first Monday of each month on the New Hampshire Institute Campus starting at 7 PM. This month, we'll be meeting in Room 146 of the Library/Learning Center/Bookstore, marked as "I" on this map. Further directions and maps are available on the NHTI site at http://www.nhti.edu. Open to the public. Free admission. Tell your friends.
This month's meeting will feature David Berube of http://www.berubeconsulting.com presenting techniques to extract content from MS Office documents. From David:
"Microsoft Office documents are ubiquitous. However, the Microsoft Office suite is not available for all platforms and comes with a prohibitive cost attached to it. While a variety of open source readers are available to read the MS Office suite formats, you can[base ']t always count on the user having installed one these readers. On the other hand, PDF viewers are common, freely available, and have a much smaller footprint than an office suite. This presentation will show you how to programatically convert Word and Excel documents into PDF, using open source tools and PHP."
SysAdmin magazine asks "How Important Is Certification?." I've pushed certification for years and think that certification is what you make of it: a marketing move, a means of self-validation, a way of determining a basic knowledge level, an indication of a self-starter. Paper Tigers abound in all fields. Certification is no panacea. But it's a start. Eventually, a professional certification and licensing process like that for Engineers is inevitable, providing a balance of both legal protection and legal liability.
10:34:06 AM comment []
Over at OSNews Eugenia Loli-Queru (p)reviews *A Quick Look at Fedora Core 5*. "It's been about 2.5 years since the first release of Fedora Core. And boy has it come long way! The new version of Fedora Core (FC) is featuring a number of goodies and performance enhancements as we describe below (and yes, it even includes a new logo). Read more on this exclusive OSNews article..."
9:43:28 AM comment []
It's not just the national and statewide election results that are threatened by poor software. Local school district results are endangered too:
"A company that sells and operates vote-counting machines made a mistake programming the machine that tabulated the results of the Monadnock Regional School District election March 14."
Fortunately, the machine was counting paper ballots so once the glitch was caught, the ballots could be re-run. However, if the vote had been paperless, there might be no way to recapture the initial selections. We need to be awfully careful as we automate voting that both innocent mistakes, as this appeared to be, and malicious tampering isn't allowed. Publishing the software, vetting and auditing it and the results are necessary. Few processes should be more transparent than voting.
5:57:37 PM comment []
(InfoWorld) - "More delays in the release schedule for Windows Vista revealed Friday hint that problems with getting the OS out the door may be broader than Microsoft has articulated."
I'm sorry to see Jim Allchin's departure from Microsoft marred by project Longhorn/Vista hitting the wall. The media went hysterical on Friday with predictions of the death of Microsoft. The parallel news story that Office 2007 is going to be released at the same time (whenever that may be) sent pundits flying to their keyboards with their pre-made Microsoft agendas.
An uncredited "insider" report that "sixty percent of Vista must be rewritten" is the closest thing I've read lately to "the sky is falling." If that's even within an order of magnitude of being true, the OS that's been under development since - what, a year before XP shipped? - would not ship until... let's see, 2001 to 2006, times sixty percent... well. That's not a month's shipdate-slip, that's three years. Not gonna happen. While the product is supposedly in beta now, which should mean feature-complete and just killing showstopper bugs, it's likely a feature or two (there are two left, aren't there?) more could be cut to meet whatever arbitrary shipdate they pick. The fact that they have destroyed the trust of their hardware OEMs by missing the holiday season is a sign that something is seriously wrong. But the press hoopla of Friday is unlikely to have brought out the real reasons just yet.
While I think the current hysteria is pretty badly exaggerated, I continue to be deeply skeptical of any new OS that Microsoft thinks they can deploy into the marketplace purely based on hardware turnover and not upgrades. While workstation purchasers at office supply stores may not have another alternative, I've encouraged my clients to buy ahead now to lock their systems into Windows XP, avoid the Microsoft upgrade programs, and take advantage of OEM/ISV/Partner arrangements that can get them XP licenses as long as possible. I've heard fellow developers already telling their clients "No Vista until SP1!"
Microsoft's got a tough road ahead.
12:17:34 PM comment []
Slashdot post: Fedora Core 5 Available. Jan Slupski writes "New release day today. Fedora Core 5 CD images are now available for download (i386, ppc, x86_64) on the ftp servers or via the torrent page." Linclips also has a short screencast on some of the default functionality."
Cranked up Azureus to download and share the ISOs for the FC5 DVD and 5-CD set(!) (plus rescue CD). If you like the Red Hat Way and like messing with some of the more experimental stuff out there, Fedora will show you what to expect in Red Hat Enterprise Linux in the next version. For workstations, I'm using a mix of Fedora and Ubuntu. For servers, I set clients up with one of the RHEL flavors. In-house, we're pinching pennies with Fedora and CentOS.
11:30:45 AM comment []
Apple Issues Updated Security Fix. Apple released another version of the security patch it distributed on March 13 to users of its OS X operating system software, in order to address a problem reported with the update. The company said it distributed the new patch, dubbed Update 2006-002 v1.1, in order to fix an issue with Apple's Safari Web browser that some users observed after installing its 2006-002 security update. According to a post on the company's Web site, the previous update had caused some Safari users to have problems launching the browser. [OSNews]
12:23:35 PM comment []
On 18 March 2002, I remarked, "So much to learn!" How little some things change. FiveFour years and around 2500 posts so far. So much to learn!
4:01:13 PM comment []
On July 15, 1992, I signed up with a CompuServe account. $22.95 a month plus connection charges, if I recall correctly. TapCIS and WinCIM to connect, DOS and Windows. CIS has been my backup service once I got broadband, a dial-up connection when I'm on the road, and finally a spam collector after all my legitimate correspondents had moved along. With the prevalence of wireless and broadband, it was a relic. 13 years and 8 months is a long time to have an email address. I closed it yesterday.
2:14:49 PM comment []
Over at Scripting News, Dave Winer points to an opml.org post: Dan MacTough: "The buzz-o-meter on OPML browsers is off the charts right now."
There is a geometric buzz building that will die off in a day or week or month or two, but there is a there there: a simple, standard way to express in XML a one-to-many relationship has been implicitly built in since the beginning. But the OPML 2.0 format proposes a couple of deceptively simple and powerful standard tags that could open up some cool innovation ala RSS: author (with a URL for a contact-me page, not an email in this spam-drowned world), a type (where you extend the content innovatively), and more. Read the spec at http://www.opml.org/spec2 and listen to Dave's March 1 Audiocast (MP3) for more insights.
As database developers, we've been thinking one-to-many relationships for a long time. "When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." Hierarchical database designers were a generation ahead of us. Dick Bard showed how to browse a database by pivoting the point of reference around the table of interest and browsing in a hierarchical fashion from there -- in DOS! It will be interesting if the maturation of OPML leads to new ways of visualizing and communication data.
1:33:44 PM comment []
Doc Searls points to a cdfreak.com posting "...one feature that has a drastic affect [sic] on battery life is the infamous DRM." Their link to a ZDNet review is broken, but it's no surprise that asking a poor little battery-operated thing to decrypt sound as well as decompress it is going to be more costly in terms of power. So, DRM supports the energy cartel. No surprise there, eh?
Send the message with your wallet. Buy unencrypted music and rip it for yourself in your choice of formats and your choice of sampling rates for your choice of playback devices: home, car, player, whatever. It's about choice.
11:15:54 AM comment []
Here's a remarkably mixed message. What are the advertisers trying to tell me in this postcard I just received? Post your favorite theories in the comments!
Visual Studio.NET is a gamble?
VS.NET is trying to look like something it's not?
It's just like the City of Lost Wages! Bet your career!
"What happens in DotNet, stays in DotNet" -- unbelievably, it actually says this on the back of the card! Amazing.
ManchesterWireless.org is an effort to provide free, no-charge wireless to downtown Manchester, New Hampshire. Check out the coverage map - it's pretty impressive! Switch the URL from DotOrg to DotNet and you find yourself at ManchesterWireless.net which aims to do the same thing in Manchester, England.
9:02:16 AM comment []
Computerworld News reports Adobe fixes critical Flash vulnerabilities. "Adobe Systems Inc. [who bought Macromedia last year -- Ted] has patched a number of critical vulnerabilities in its Flash media player that could be used by attackers to take over an affected system."
OSNews reports Gates Says Services are the Future for Computers -- and Microsoft. "Company makes plans to move away from prepackaged software and into web-based applications. As the Internet transforms the way people use computers, Microsoft founder Bill Gates has a message for the world's biggest software maker: adapt or die. "We must act quickly and decisively," Gates wrote in an Oct. 30 memo to Microsoft executives. "The next sea change is upon us." More at DetNews."
So, the Microsoft Roadmap bangs a left, taking Microsoft up on two wheels and tossing out Microsoft "partners" who were along for the ride but had invested their futures in rich client-side applications. How many times can Microsoft do that before people catch on? A redundant question, surely. In a recent ProFox mailing list post I wrote:
In the late 80s, I sat in a room back at the Park Plaza
Hotel in Boston while Microsoft announced the rollout of the NT
platform. During the Q&A session, a fellow came up to the microphone
and explained that he was a Microsoft "partner," had subscribed to
their products and had spent years with a staff of programmers
developing an app not far from release, but targetted at OS/2. What,
he asked, was Microsoft going to do for him? His voice was unsteady,
and it was apparent that he was facing a disasterous failure. There
was an awkward silence when he finished as the crowd fell silent.
There was no noise but an occasional clink of crystal against
silverware. A Microsoftie finally managed to speak up, trying to
deflect the comment into a pitch for their new development tools. The
spell ended, but the impression remains to this day.
I can't lead another client down that path.
You know, these articles are so tired. A writer has nothing better to do that to trot out the tired history of DOS, Windows, Microsoft discovering the internet a few years too late and making a big deal of the latest announcement, whether it is Live or MSN or SQL Server 2005 or "Information At Your Fingertips" and making it the next Microsoft-bet-the-farm story. There's so little new information ("news") in the article: old news: Microsoft revenue growth is coasting to a stop, products are shipping slower and slower, diversification and lack of direction are confused. New news: Microsoft releases a BillG memo from five months ago.
It's Microsoft PR. Bill wrote a memo in October they've decided to release now. As Matt Rosoff, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft, says at the end of the story, "There's a bit of misdirection going on here." I think the question is how customers will read this. Will they see "Microsoft is on to a new paradigm -- I've got to jump onboard to get the early adopter advantage" or will it be "There goes Microsoft, thrashing about again -- DotNet has almost gotten stable and they're off on another wild goose chase." Time will tell, but I'm hearing more and more from the later camp.
4:49:50 PM comment []
From Slashdot: McAfee Anti-Virus Causes Widespread File Damage. AJ Mexico writes, "[Friday] McAfee released an anti-virus update that contained an anomaly in the DAT file that caused many important files to be deleted from affected systems. At my company, tens of thousands of files were deleted from dozens of servers and around 2000 user machines. Affected applications included MS Office, and products from IBM (Rational), GreenHills, MS Office, Ansys, Adobe, Autocad, Hyperion, Win MPM, MS Shared, MapInfo, Macromedia, MySQL, CA, Cold Fusion, ATI, FTP Voyager, Visual Studio, PTC, ADS, FEMAP, STAT, Rational.Apparently the DAT file targeted mostly, if not exclusively, DLLs and EXE files." An anonymous reader added, "Already, the SANS Internet Storm Center received a number of notes from distressed sysadmins reporting thousands of deleted or quarantined files. McAfee in response released advice to restore the files. Users who configured McAfee to delete files are left with using backups (we all got good backups... or?) or System restore."
Microsoft Watch from Mary Jo Foley notes Vista Sheds Another Anticipated Feature?. "little explanation (so far at least), Microsoft has decided to cut from Windows Vista planned support for the Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI)." Isn't EFI the next generation replacement of BIOS used in the Intel-based MacBooks? I think I'd feel more secure knowing I couldn't boot Windows on my MacBook...
1:38:35 PM comment []
Computerworld News reports Maryland House votes to oust Diebold machines. "Maryland's House of Delegates voted 137-0 to replace the state's Diebold voting machines, valued at $90 million, until the manufacturer adds the ability to create a paper trail of votes." Good. Send a clear message to vendors: closed-source, unauditable vote counting is unacceptable.
11:57:04 AM comment []
Computerworld News reports Microsoft to issue one critical patch Tuesday. "In its monthly patch release next Tuesday, Microsoft Corp. said it will issue one critical security bulletin concerning the Office suite and one bulletin on Windows that is rated important."
Later on in the article, they explain, "Microsoft will distribute its updated version of the Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool via Windows Update, Microsoft Update, Windows Server Update Services and the Download Center... There will also be one non-security High-Priority Update on Microsoft Update and Windows Server Update Services. There won't be any non-security High-Priority Updates for Windows coming over Windows Update or Software Update Services." Well, that certainly clears things up.
10:29:45 AM comment []
Software patents are a horrible idea. A patent is a monopoly on an idea. If every original thinker can patent their ideas, no one can be allowed to think. This is nonsense. Apple should be able to copyright their expression of the idea (in this case, some very unoriginal and derivative ideas of displaying XML, in my opinion) so that their work cannot be directly copied, but they cannot be allowed to have exclusive ownership of the *idea* of displaying some variants of XML in a browser. I, for one, do not have the resources to engage in a patent dispute with Apple over my RSS reader. This creates a chilling effect in an industry where all vendors are demanding the Right to Innovate.
11:09:12 AM comment []
Computerworld News reports After flap, Symantec adjusts browser bug count. "A report issued today by Symantec Corp. features two different ways of counting browser bugs: one that finds IE has the most vulnerabilities, another that indicates Firefox is the bug-leader."
So, there! That ought to settle the issue once and for all. Lies, damned lies, statistics and bug counts.
10:37:08 AM comment []
Linux-Watch.com asks: "Is OpenOffice really ten years behind MS Office?" A better question might be if that's a bad thing. The 2nd edition of "Hacker's Guide to Word for Windows" printed in 1995 claims to cover WinWord 6. How many more features did we really need? Toolbars that transmogrified into palettes? Menus that went 3-D when the mouse was over them? The words came out the same.
I don't agree that OpenOffice.org is "ten years behind." I still can't get it to run the Melissa virus. But I'm not sure "ten years behind" or even better "ten years on a different path" is a bad thing.
8:55:27 AM comment []
(InfoWorld) - "Never mind worrying about hackers stealing your password. A security researcher with the Finnish military has shown how they could steal your fingerprint, by taking advantage of an omission in Microsoft's Fingerprint Reader, a PC authentication device that Microsoft has been shipping since September 2004."
When you lose your password, you can get it reset. When your credit card shows suspicious activity, you can get a new and different one. What happens when your fingerprints are stolen?
8:46:03 AM comment []
"Last week at PyCon I gave a session on The State of Dabo, and we recorded it with a video camera located in the back of the room. So yeah, we have a recording, but both the video and audio are less than optimal. Still, if you'd like to see it, I'm making the video available."
"Due to the large file size, I won't be serving it directly from my servers. I've created BitTorrent files that will allow everyone to share the bandwidth and make things go much more smoothly. The session is broken up into 3 parts, so here are the URLs for each of the torrents:"
"If you're not familiar with the way that BitTorrent works, keep in mind that once you have the complete file, *don't* close your torrent client. Instead, leave it running, which will help speed up downloading for others. The more people connected to these torrents,
the faster everyone gets a copy!"
I'll be hosting a couple of BitTorrent seeds here over the weekend, so grab it while you can!
10:20:22 AM comment []
Guy Pardoe, MonadLUG Coordinator, announces their March 9th meeting:
The next meeting of the Monadnock Linux User Group (MonadLUG) will be Thursday, March 9th, 7:00pm, at the SAU 1 Superintendent's Office behind South Meadow School in Peterborough.
SSH is a program to log into another computer over a network, to execute commands in a remote machine, and to move files from one machine to another. It provides strong authentication and secure communications over insecure channels. It is a replacement for rlogin, rsh, rcp, and rdist. It protects a network from attacks such as IP spoofing, IP source routing, and DNS spoofing.
*****************
Directions: The SAU 1 Superintendant of Schools office is directly behind the South Meadow School. From downtown Peterborough, travel north on route 202 approximately 2 & 1/2 miles. Look for a white sign on the left "SAU 1 Superintendant of Schools Office." The entrance is on the left, just before South Meadow school, and across the street from Sims Press. Follow the drive up towards dumpsters where there is ample parking. Come down the stairs to the set of doors on your right. Enter thru double set of doors and turn left...straight into the board room.
The monthly meeting of CentraLUG, the Concord/Central New Hampshire chapter of the Greater New Hampshire Linux Users Group, occurs on the first Monday of each month on the New Hampshire Institute Campus starting at 7 PM. This month, we'll be meeting in Room 146 of the Library/Learning Center/Bookstore, http://www.nhti.net/nhtimap.pdf , marked as "I" on that map. Directions and maps are available on the NHTI site. Open to the public. Free admission. Tell your friends.
This month's meeting will feature Steve Amsden, Network Administrator for the Merrimack Valley School District, showing off LTSP, the Linux Terminal Server Project. From Steve:
"LTSP is an add-on package for Linux that allows you to connect lots of low-powered thin client terminals to a Linux server. Applications typically run on the server, and accept input and display their output on the thin client display. The power and flexibility of this platform have far reaching implications, particularly for K12 school districts who have been educated and brave enough to seek other solutions than the cost of systems and applications software. But more specifically, being locked into a treadmill of constant upgrades, licensing problems, and unsupportable client-server nework environments that have been the Achille's heel of technology education. Merrimack Valley School District has five LTSP server environments in various states of implementation, and
uses e-Smith Linux server for gateway, DHCP, content filtering, firewall, and Windows 2000 emulation using SAMBA. Exeter School District, as well as Salem, are too using combinations of e-Smith and LTSP. Though LTSP has made in-roads into the schools, it will be some time before the full impact is realized, and others convinced that there is a better way than the Microsoft Way."
Should be an awesome presentation! Hope to see you there!
10:08:24 AM comment []
On Tuesday, Dave Winer teased us with "My own teaser. First there was RSS 2.0. Then Web 2.0. Tomorrow, the next 2.0. ";->" On Wednesday, Dave pointed to the public review of OPML 2.0 specification. Outline Processor Markup Languages lets you create, validate, communicate, exchange, link outlines with others. There's a lot of power in that simple concept, and a well-thought out specification by a man who's been thinking outlines for a long time. Check it out and think about how you could use it in your systems.
The SANS Institute Internet Storm Center points out Apple's Monthly OS X Security Patch with goodies for everyone, including patches that address recent Safari issues and the flaw in Launch Services that allowed "safe" file types to launch unsafe executables. Get patching!
9:20:17 PM comment []
Microsoft Watch from Mary Jo Foley reports FoxPro Faithful Await Microsoft 'Sedna'. "This week, FoxPro developers received a first test build of a new set of technologies, code-named Sedna, designed to make FoxPro interoperable with Windows Vista, Office 2007 and .Net."
"Visual FoxPro developers, oft-overlooked by Microsoft, are about to get an infusion of new technologies aimed at making the FoxPro language interoperable with Windows Vista, Office 2007 and .Net."
8:36:29 PM comment []
OSNews points to two articles that juxtapose in a Point-CounterPoint fashion. What I read: in the first piece, the author is desperately trying to prove that Windows sucks less than before. Bugs are fixed. Bad driver models replaced. Security is tightened. This is incremental improvement, laudable, expected, but not compelling, and not worth the cost of the update, nor the incredibly long wait. Microsoft themselves have admitted that Vista sales will come through the purchase of new machines, not upgrades. This isn't market choice, it's monopolistic behavior.
The second article argues that Vista is a mess, and I agree. It's not an operating system, it's a software bundle that includes yet another incompatible operating system kernel, a new GUI engine and interface, and new half-apps (bundled applications with the good features removed).
It's funny. In some ways, I see a parallel between Microsoft shipping this huge bunch of stuff (Media Players, backup software, networking, GUI, web browser, game subsystem, kernel) and cable TV providers shipping bundles of cable channels. Each insists it would be too hard or expensive to unbundle and provide the customer with a la carte choice. Each backs this up with some pretty questionable claims.
It's about choice.
Why Windows Vista Won't Suck. "There's a lot of confusion about Windows Vista these days. Many online discussion forums have a great number of users who express no desire to upgrade to Vista. Sure, we've all seen the screenshots and maybe a video or two of Vista in action, but for many it only seems like new tricks for an old dog. Yeah, it's got some fancy 3D effects in the interface, but OS X has been doing that for years now, and it's still Windows underneath, right? The sentiment seems to be that Vista is another Windows ME. Perhaps part of the problem is that people just don't know what Vista has in store for them."
Also from OSNews, Why Windows Needs to Go Back to Basics. "Once upon a time, operating systems managed the resources of computers, and that was about it. But after the PC revolution, most software makers started subscribing to the theory that bigger means better. But does it?"
10:20:50 AM comment []
Computerworld News notes Apple unveils Intel-powered Mac minis. "Apple Computer's Mac mini became the company's latest offering to make the transition to Intel processors today, with one of the two new models featuring a dual-core chip."
Quick summary: Intel single-core 1.5 MHz, 512 Mb, 60 Gb, read-only DVD for $600. Intel dual-core 1.67, 512, 80, DVD-write, $800. Great boxes with infrared interfaces for remote control, could be neat system to add to your home theater stack.
9:41:18 AM comment []
Xaraya is an extensible, Open Source web application framework written in PHP and licensed under the GNU General Public License. Xaraya delivers the requisite infrastructure and tools to create custom web applications that include fully dynamic multi-platform Content Mangement Solutions (CMS). Xaraya's modular, database independent architecture introduces tools that separate form, function, content, and design with on-the-fly extensions allowing greater control and versatility.
Jonathan will present an overview of Xaraya, its architecture, core modules, and extension modules, including a brief demonstration how to get started developing web sites using the Xaraya platform. Examples will be used from current live web sites.
Jonathan is principal of Parkerhill Technology Group, a strategic management and web development firm, and has over 25 years of entrepreneurial and technical experience ranging from small start-ups to multinational corporations. He holds a Masters degree in Media Technology from MIT, and serves on several boards including the Software Assocation of NH (SwANH), Amoskaeg Business Incubator in Manchester NH, MIT Enterprise Forum of NH, and North Country Council CEDS (economic development strategy). Jonathan lives in northern Grafton County on a retired dairy farm with his wife and 4 young children.
7:55:08 AM comment []
