Washington Technology has a story about Linux in Space:
On board the shuttle, which circles the planet at approximately 150 miles in the atmosphere, an embedded PC module holds a 233-megahertz processor with 128 megabytes of random access memory and a solid-state 144-megabyte hard drive disk. The computer runs a commercial Linux operating system, Red Hat version 6.1, according to Frank Hallahan, a Computer Science Corp. employee, who is a member of the OMNI team.
[via NewsForge]
From the navel-gazing dept:
I’ve jumped from the 40-somethingth Matt on Google to the twenty-somethingth Matt (23rd!) on Google.
I’m suprised that nobody else has mentioned the most recent google shift. I swear I don’t look myself up every day. Really!
The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce that NetBSD 1.6.1 has been branched and the release engineering process has begun. NetBSD 1.6.1 is a maintenance (or patch) release for users of NetBSD 1.6, not to be confused with NetBSD-current (which will become the next major release). As a patch release, it is not branched off the head of the CVS source tree, but instead includes all security fixes and patches applied to the 1.6 branch.
Looks like we’re looking at a RC followed by a release in the near future.
I’m going to one of my classes for the first time tonight. It looks like I’ll be working almost exclusively in .NET and C#. For kicks, I thought I’d wear my Linux Rocks tshirt to class. We’ll see if people have a sense of humor or not.
Now all I have to do is find a Microsoft shirt to wear to my Saturday morning class in which I’ll be working almost exclusively in Java.
Java in the morning, C++ in the afternoon, C# in the evening. If you count my recent Python on the side (and in the middle of the night), you could explain my current headache. I’ll blame it on a lack of caffeine, though.
I’m building client tools for posting to the blog, and for editing existing items already posted. On top of that, I will be teaching a Smalltalk class – I use Squeak with 8-10 year olds. They have a blast, and there’s no way I could get anywhere using something like Java with this age group.
I remember the good old days (possibly different than your good old days) when Pascal was the only thing available (besides Logo) to teach basic programming principles. Nowadays I’d make the argument that Python might be well suited to take over this role. For an example, check out the Python in Education SIG at python.org.
I don’t have any experience in Smalltalk to comment on how well it might be used in education. However, if you can make it stick with a group of 8-10 year olds, you’ve got to be doing something right.
Sam Gentile has migrated from Radio to an ASP.NET weblog. His RSS feed has also changed. I’ve updated my links and feeds appropriately. My old pointers to his weblog will still point to his old blog, and will eventually rot.
If you’re using a cute title rather than one which summarizes your post, I’m unlikely to click and read it. You probably don’t care, but I wanted to mention it.
Tomas Restrepo has been diving into the rotor source, starting with CLIX.EXE. I can’t wait to hear more.
I upgraded to Groove 2.5 this morning. Thanks go out to Paresh Suthar for mentioning it.
NewsForge notes that Linux and Main‘s Dennis Powell actually fit inside that tiny little hut (along with other people!) at the Ximian booth at LinuxWorld. He also managed to sneak a peek at Ximian Desktop 2.0.
Here’s another reason why I love Kuro5hin:
Dumpster diving, rather than the physical diving implied by its name, is actually more along the lines of fishing – it is as relaxed or competitive as desired, follows many seasonal trends and localizations, is an excellent social activity, and may just leave you with something interesting or tasty. Dumpster diving consists largely of rummaging about through others’ trash. It at once allows you to challenge and take advantage of the fact that people as a whole are very, very wasteful. And while poking through your neighbor’s trash this very moment would be a perfectly acceptable, if perhaps somewhat awkward, dive, there is a fair amount to know in order to keep the diving experience safe, enjoyable, and fruitful. For many, the thought of going anywhere near a smelly dumpster, let alone touching, wearing, or eating something from inside of it, is revolting. If you find yourself with interests duly piqued and revulsion to a minimum, then read on for a guide to the excellent world of dumpster diving.
And a quick note to Chris Heilman: I believe that it’s pronounced Kuroshin, as if the ‘5’ were a l33t ‘s’. Beware, though, I have heard it referred to as Kuro-five-in. Congrats on 365 of 101-365!
Linux Orbit goes over ReiserFS basics. [via Linux Today]
Earlier today, Slashdot pointed to How to be a Programmer: A Short, Comprehensive and Personal Summary. It’s well written and makes a lot of sense.
This CNet headline just about sums it up:
AOL loses Ted Turner and $99 billion.
File that under ‘O’ for ‘Oops!’
Here’s a shot from the trackback section of a MovableType weblog I have running behind the firewall:
For the record, implementing these functions in Python was trivial. The source for tblib is pretty darn short even with a bunch of comments. I could compress it a bit, but I’d like to keep it as readable to the newbie as possible. Perhaps grokking the source to tblib would be the next logical step for a newbie after reading my ftplib example. After they read Dive Into Python, of course.
I managed to pick up tblib this evening and start working on it again. I implemented some basic error checking and autodiscovery. (Yay!) The previous version of tblib would just consume the XML that resulted from a trackback ping. Now it parses the xml with a really simple regular expression (thanks Steve!). If it was a successful ping, self.tbErrorCode will be 0 (which is a good thing) and self.tbErrorMessage will be None. If something went wrong, self.tbErrorCode will be 1 and self.tbErrorMessage will hopefully help you a bit.
Here’s an example for you:
>>> import tblib
>>> tb = tblib.TrackBack()
>>> tb.autodiscover('http://Queue/weblog/matt/archives/2003_01.html#000007')
>>> print tb.tbUrl
http://Queue/weblog/mt-tb.cgi/7
>>> tb.blog_name = 'My Weblog'
>>> tb.title = 'This Post Will Ping That Weblog Entry'
>>> tb.url = 'http://postneo.com'
>>> tb.excerpt = 'I released tblib 0.1.0 today. It supports autodiscovery...'
>>> tb.ping()
>>> print tb.tbErrorCode
0
Here’s the source: tblib-0.1.0.py.txt. To use it, save it (as tblib.py) to a directory, create a script in that directory, and put import tblib at the top. It doesn’t use anything bleeding edge, but I’m pretty sure you’ll need Python 2.x. See my original tblib weblog post for additional info. It is currently licensed under the GPL, though if that is stopping you from including it in your project, email me and I can dual-license it or something. Also use that email link to send me any questions or comments.
Eventually, I’ll code a setup script for tblib, and I still owe you a command line trackback client using tblib.
Scott Johnson has hit the 20MB limit on Radio UserLand’s server, which can happen if you’re publishing a lot of images or multimedia files.
I use Radio to upstream to an external server. I just hit my 100MB limit on my web provider, so you can only imagine how long ago I would have reached my 40MB limit with Radio. I actually only used Userland’s servers for a few days, because I already had web hosting. Besides, I’d rather not be a number.
I am a URI, damnit.
O’Reilly’s OSDir now has a Java section.
The Parsec creators have announced today that they are going to release the Parsec project source code early next month.
Parsec is a 3-D space shooter. The screenshots look impressive. It looks like it is set up to be massively multiplayer. It looks like it has potential.