Month: June 2003

Via Kevin Dangoor, The Stairway to Maven [pdf] gives a good powerpoint-style overiew of Maven.

Zawody on really big MySQL tables:

When this happens, the first reaction I hear is “You never told me that MySQL has a 4GB limit! What am I going to do?” Amusingly, I usually do describe the limit when I discuss the possibility of using MySQL with various groups–they often forget or underestimate the impact it will have. Putting that aside, the problem is easily fixed, as that page explains. You simply need to run an ALTER TABLE command.

Kenneth Hunt points to Teamspeak:

15 minutes to deploy an anonymous server on my local lan and connect two windows boxes to the Debian server. Speex codec sounds decent from Plantronics headsets, definitely one to watch! Didn’t get time to dig into adminning the Teamspeak server, but it looks incredibly robust right now. If you’re interested in voip and oss codecs like speex it’s worth a closer look. Check back here for a link to the test server!

This is great.  The Speex codec is quite good for compressing voice to itty bitty.

Wi-Fi Networking News:

SmallNetBuilder gets the story on Linksys pulling the WSB24 signal booster: Pretty simple: the unit is legal to work with just a couple of Linksys devices, and people are using it in other ways too easily. The FCC wants connectors to be hard to use by anyone but the manufacturer.

The hardcore geeks will always do it, I guess they’re trying to get at the casual Wi-Fi performance enthusiast…

Wi-Fi Networking News:

Bluetooth gets revised: The new versions has some small and large improvements, including incorporating the co-existence recommendations for adaptive frequency hopping so that Bluetooth and other standards like Wi-Fi can play nicely together.

The Register [via Dave]:

Linus Torvalds, creator and chief maintainer of the Linux kernel is moving on, ending a six year association with chip company Transmeta.

“I’ve decided to take a leave-of-absense after 6+ years at Transmeta to actually work full-time on the kernel,” he wrote in a posting to the kernel mailing list.

Looks like he’s picking up a gig at the Open Source Development Lab.

Thanks to Erik for the pointer, I just installed WebCalendar on a server and I’m loving it.  Installation instructions are a little hard to find, but I read them here in CVS.

NMap 3.2.8 (stable) is out.  Nothing major, but grab it while it’s hot:

This version fixes several bugs which could cause Nmap to crash, as well as a few less serious ones. All support for SCO operating systems has been dropped. The NmapFE graphical frontend has been updated to reflect newer Nmap options.

Update:

This one’s for Erik: NMap on your Zaurus.  There’s also a graphical frontend available.

Web Matrix 0.6 is out.  Go get it if that’s your type of thing.

TheServerSide notes the release of Apache Axis 1.1.

Dave Johnson has resigned from his current job and will be moving on to bigger and better things.  Congrats!

Via freshmeat, Install4J:

install4j is a cross platform Java installer that produces native launchers and installers for all major platforms. install4j offers an intuitive GUI that makes it easy to quickly define installation projects. A command line compiler and an integration for Apache ANT are included.

I’m watching the webcast with the guys at #mobitopia at the moment.  Here’s the lowdown:

• Nokia PR: 6600 captures mobile business
• Forum Nokia: Tech specs
• Nokia 6600 main page
• Mobitopia coverage

Golfo Mistico:

Lots of struggles, lots of work, lots of fun, but now the wait is over and Orixo is alive. More on this later, for now sit back and enjoy the ride! 🙂

Congrats to everyone on the site launch!

Joi Ito has joined the Creative Commons board.  This is good.

The computer I’m on is having issues, so consider this a rough roundup:

• OSNews: A Be, Inc. engineer comments on YellowTAB‘s Zeta.
• Patrick bought a bunch of books at the Border’s in Falls Church.
• MacRumors reports that Apple might broadcast the WWDC keynote in their stores.  I might have to schedule some time off for that one.
• Dan Gillmor reports in from Helsinki.
• Clemens has released his crazy stuff SDK.
• Kottke is now posting his remaindered links.  This reminds me of the #mobitopia IRC links.  I’m contemplating setting up a linkbot that allows me to log links via Jabber, SOAP, XML-RPC or the like.  In my copious spare time, of course.
• PocketPC Minds on software development for PDAs.

Here’s a rumor that was passed on to me by my friend Tony Brown, from Imaging Resource:

Is Nikon developing a larger lens mount to accommodate full-frame CCDs? One of Germany’s biggest photo magazines seems to think so.

This has the potential to be both bad and good for consumers.  If true, it would mean that lower cost full-CCD cameras might be in the works.  It would be bad because you wouldn’t be able to use the same lens on both platforms.

Time will tell if this is just a random rumor or if there is truth behind it.

Since I don’t have a grasp of MathML, you’ll have to pretend that you’re reading this from a Calculus textbook:

As horsepower approaches infinity, life expectancy approaches the present.

This theorem is brought to you by the Mitubishi Lancer Evolution.

Don’t get me started on JSR-223.  I had a nice big fat rant ready last night about it when I lost power.  Lambda the Ultimate picked it up today.

My summary: Sun ignored an excellent existing scripting framework for Java (Jython) and opted to reinvent the wheel with Zend using PHP.  And they’re going to ensure that this new scripting framework will be web-only.  Erik Hatcher doesn’t seem too happy about that.  I’m not too happy about the whole thing.

Embracing scripting is part of their strategy to infiltrate the “Corporate” market and to raise their developer base from 3 million to 10 million.

MacCentral:

Microsoft on Friday officially dropped development of Internet Explorer for Macintosh. The company’s Macintosh Business Unit (MacBU) will release an update for the OS X version of the browser on Monday that will have security and performance enhancements, but no new features. Microsoft said it would continue to support Internet Explorer 5 for the Mac for the foreseeable future, but development of the browser has been discontinued. Any future updates to the browser will only contain maintenance or security fixes, no new features.