Matt Croydon::Postneo

Day: September 18, 2002

  • MacCentral: Apple starts shipping its new (really expensive) Dual 1.25GHz PowerMacs.

  • CNet: Lindows 2.0 is a coming.  Michael’s Minutes on Lindows’ web site has several screen shots and feature blurbs.

  • Newsforge also reports in about the United Linux press release and conference call.  They and others have issues with an earlier ‘closed beta’ which may potentially have violated the GPL:

    UnitedLinux admitted it had its partners sign a non-disclosure agreement in order to use the closed beta, which likely means that UL violated the copyright of kernel developers everywhere and others who have contributed to GNU/Linux. If the NDA was structured so that the GPL would take precedence on non-proprietary, Free Software elements of the software, then that NDA would not violate the terms of the GPL. It is more likely, however, that the NDA squashed the GPLed freedoms by forcing recipients of the closed beta to agree that they would not redistribute any portion of the software.

  • Cool Radio Root Update of the Day

    system.verbs.builtins.radio.weblog.writeRssFile changed on Wed, 18 Sep 2002 17:48:38 GMT: New version, supports RSS 2.0 features including item-level pubDate, guid; and channel-level generator, ttl.

    This is cool for people running Radio, otherwise, eh. My weblog is now spitting out an RSS2.0 feed.  It shouldn’t break anything. I wonder when I’ll be able to stream my Syndic8 ID and other cool stuff.

  • Linux Today: United Linux will release an open beta to the public on September 23. More details are at unitedlinux.com.

  • Linux Today points to two articles at IBM DeveloperWorks (article1, article2) about creating solid code with php.  Here’s the intro from the first article:

    The Develop rock-solid code in PHP series is about solving practical real-life problems in medium- to large-scale applications. With a sharp focus on new features available in PHP 4, the articles shed light on numerous tips and tricks that make life easier. Inside, you will find plenty of examples and techniques to learn, with lots of sample code. In this first article, PHP veteran Amol Hatwar gives a higher perspective for designing and writing bug-free, maintainable code for medium- to large-scale Web applications.

  • It’s the end of the world as we know it: RSS is no longer a draft but a spec.

  • Web Services DevCon

    If you were thinking about attending the Web Services DevCon but couldn’t justify $445, you can now register to attend the event for 50% off.  Just send an email to conference@sellsbrothers.com and let them know that you are a friend of Matt Croydon, and they’ll get you the hookup.  Let me know if you’ll be there, I’m gonna be an itty bitty fish in a big effing sea.

  • A Klog Apart: What exactly is good blogging? According to Phil Wolff:

    • Persistence and frequency
    • Stringing ideas together using words
    • Writing in a way that engages
    • Context, lots of context
    • Themes
    • Voice
    • Authority / Sincerity

    I would highly suggest reading the rest of his post for more info on blogging and klogging.

  • Jeremy Zawodny throws Debian Woody on a Sun LX50. $2795 is an entry-level server now, according to Sun, ouch! Woody does fine.

  • Thinlet goes LGPL: The extremely lightweight GUI toolkit for Java is now more configurable than ever. Phillip Pearson’s thinblog uses this toolkit. [via Second p0st]

  • DH Brown Associates [pdf]: A whitepaper entitled, “Migrating Mail and Web Services to Linux.” Here are few advantages Linux has, quoted from the whitepaper:

    • License Costs– Depending on what third-party software is required in addition to a Linux distribution, license costs for a Linux web or mail server may be 25 Œ 50% of a Windows-based server for similar workloads. The Windows-based server may provide greater functionality, but system administrators and deployment specialists report ieLinux is good enoughli and provides more flexibility for most deployments.
    • Remote Management– Linux offers the ability to perform most system administration tasks remotely using standard UNIX/Linux remote login and other remote features. This may save considerable travel time in a campus or metropolitan area and save payroll or service contract dollars in more remote locations.
    • Better Uptime– Some users surveyed have experienced higher availability for a single Linux system than Windows NT Server. A typical system administrator or deployment consultant will say that Linux stays up for months whereas Windows NT may need two or three reboots per month. This matches the common wisdom and was borne out by our research.
    • Lighter Hardware Requirements– Many of these Linux servers run without the X-Windows system and desktop GUI, which frees up system resources for mail or web serving. Windows cannot be configured similarly.
    • Freedom of Choice– Some users do not like being locked into proprietary formats such as Microsoft Active Server Pages for web serving or Exchange. Linux-based solutions offer a choice of mail solution providers and technical support offerings. [via Linux Today]

  • Canon Replaces G2 digital camera with G3, but it remains a 4 megapixel camera.  Why would anyone do that? (links to dpreview)

  • Polybot: Vladislav Shkapenyuk at Polytechnic University has written a crawler that has recently started crawling my blog.  Here’s a snippet from the project goals:

    We use the data to experiment with search technology, and to build search engines and other tools in collaboration with colleagues and graduate and undergraduate students.

    This is great.  I’m glad someone out there is researching things like this at an academic level.  Keep up the work!

  • Gentoo: A live-boot CD with everything you need to run the Unreal Tournament 2003 demo in Linux.  Here’s the iso file.

  • Derik’s Boot and Nuke: For the truly paranoid:

    Darik’s Boot and Nuke (“DBAN”) is a self-contained boot floppy that securely wipes the hard disks of most computers. DBAN will automatically and completely delete the contents of any hard disk that it can detect, which makes it an appropriate utility for bulk or emergency data destruction.

    At least it’ll make the computer forensics guys at the FBI earn their pay…

  • OpenBSD Journal: They point to symon, a minimalistic system monitor.  It’s currently written for OpenBSD.  The site has some pretty pictures that remind me of mrtg and other system status graphs.

  • Jeremy Allaire: He has an audioblog entry at this link and is also announcing Audio Blogger Alpha 0.5.  Push the play button!

  • Dekstop Fishbowl: An idea is born:

    Then, I suddenly realised. Wow, I’ve finally found an interesting application for Javaspaces. Create a Tuple Space. Every time you post a blog entry, you put it into the space, along with a bunch of linking objects that point to any other URL you referenced in your post. Clients could traverse the conversations in the space, ask for event notifications if a new reference is made to a post, et. al. Leasing would ensure the space culled conversations that nobody was referring to any more.

    A very cool idea indeed.  The rest of the post is also worth reading.

  • Jesse Ezell at Sellsbrothers.com:

    Project Mono has decided that implementing WinForms natively on platforms is just too hard. They are instead going to implement a Win32 version and use WINE Lib for the linux / mac implementation. We’ll see if they stay this way. IMO, if things don’t change, WinForms on Project Mono has now become about as important as Microsoft ‘Bob’.

    I don’t think this is a good thing.  The link provided by this story is here.  I’m not quite sure if this is being blown out of proportion or if this really matters or not.