Via Slashdot, Knoppix 3.4 is fresh and hot. I’m currently torrenting the 3.4 release, though it seems to have stalled out on me. If I ever get it down, I’ll do my duty and leave the torrent open You might also try your luck with one of the mirrors. A quick peek at the package list is impressive for a live Linux distro, but I don’t see any Earth shattering changes.
I feel like a bandwidth hog. I just downloaded a 3.3 build yesterday.
The Wireless Development Weblog points to an article at Smartphone Thoughts about the limited nature of AT&T Wireless’ $49.99 Mobile Internet Unlimited PDA Plan:
“AT&T Wireless further reserves the right to move a subscriber from the Mobile Internet Unlimited PDA Plan to the standard $79.99 monthly unlimited Mobile Internet Data Plan, without notice, if the subscriber uses more than 100 megabytes of data in each of two consecutive months.”
Where am I, the UK?
I must have not been looking. A new version of Netstumbler came out late last month. The 0.4 release sports a help file and compatability with more cards. There is also a new release of Ministumbler (for Pocket PC) out. Thanks to a series of semi-dark tips on yesterdays The Screen Savers (which makes great background at 8am) for the heads up.
On *nixen, Kismet is the wiffy sniffer of choice. Kismac is supposed to be a really pretty but functional GUI interface for OSX.
Even though it’s old news for those that live on GMT, a slashdot story prompted me to download Thunderbird 0.6. I’ve been using 0.5 since it came out, and I’d have to say that overall I love it. IMAP support in Thunderbird has been great, and I’m hoping that things are just a little bit more refined in the new release. The new logo is slick, and the upgrade seems to have gone over smoothly. Time to poke around…
Update: The junk mail filtering in 0.6 seems to be significantly improved. It looks like passive junk identification is enabled by default (good) and I haven’t seen any false positives yet. I tried to train 0.5 unsuccessfully but it either missed spam or produced false positives.
Here are a few links for a lazy Sunday afternoon:
Via freshmeat, PmWiki is a PHP-based Wiki with a clean but nice look to it. I really like the editable sidebar. Also, if you add a URL of a .gif, .jpg, or .png, it’ll display the image on the page. Pretty slick. The basic syntax looks good, though as with every other wiki on the plant, it’s just different enough to leave you constantly scratching your head.
“which wiki planet am I on right now?”
Update: Wow. I decided to install PmWiki. I was thoroughly impressed with how lightweight it is (no mysql neccesary) and how easy it was to set up. I followed the installation instructions and went from a tarball to a working wiki in less than 60 seconds.
Now to be fair, I should probably edit a few things in the config file in order to customize my wiki. However, being able to go from a bunch of files to a working installation in a minute is awesome.
I took a bit of time this morning to download OpenBSD 3.5, fresh from the oven. It took me awhile to find a near-ish mirror that had 3.5 on it, but I booted from the tiny CD ISO and away I went.
Overall the install process was the usual no-frills text-based system that gets the job done but isn’t pretty. I was pretty happy with it, except for one thing:
Disk partitioning/disk labeling
Jeez. There’s really no excuse for this. I’ve done my fair share of installing *nix systems. My first experience involved downloading disksets of Slackware (in a subdirectory called slakware) over a 14.4 modem. The whole process was new to me, but I got through it. A, AP, D, K, etc. I did a whole lot of rawriting. The text install system was good but not pretty (albeit prettier than the OpenBSD installer).
It worked. I moved on. I’ve since installed pretty much every major version of Red Hat in addition to modern Slackware, Debian, SUSE, Fedora, Mandrake, the BSDs, and more that I can’t even remember.
I’m not a *nix newb by any stretch of the imagination, yet the OpenBSD disk partition/disk label system totally makes me step back and say “WTF?”
After I look at the install guide and blink several times, it all comes back to me and I’m able to limp through the partitioning and disk label process.
Hey guys, it doesn’t have to be this hard. When I was lost at the partition prompt, I typed ‘?’ and was only able to see about half of the help. Where was the rest? Oh, it had already scrolled off the screen. It’d be great to know that at the size: prompt 150M is an option. It’s not obvious by any stretch of the imagination.
All of my complaints aside, the rest of the process went smoothly and made a lot of sense to a veteran Linux user. OpenBSD managed to find the el-cheapo NIC that is in my test box, DHCP gave me all of my settings, and away I went. I opted to load the basic OpenBSD packages from CD. They loaded quickly, and I soon rebooted the system in to OpenBSD. SSH works great out of the box, and we should all thank the OpenBSD team for the glory that is OpenSSH.
It’s lean and mean, baby. It’s not like a default Red Hat install where you’ve got a bajillion processes running and a bajillion ports open. In fact, it’s the opposite. There are just enough processes running for the machine to be able to function. This is the reason that only one root exploit has been found in the default install.
Since installing 3.5, I’ve used adduser to add a non-root user to the system (remember to add youself to the group wheel if you’d like to su), set up and used X using xf86cfg, and added a few packages using pkg_add. I’ll probably start playing with the ports collection soon.
Summary: OpenBSD is a tight little secure distro that gets the job done. The install process is bare-bones but makes sense except for disk partitioning/labeling. You don’t get a lot by default, but if you only add what you need, you won’t have to deal with insecure bloat.
Congrats to the OpenBSD team on a great release!
Sun Microsystems Inc. may be selling servers running Linux, but that doesn’t mean it is cutting back on the evolution of Solaris. Among its plans, the company is considering offering a free, open source version of its flagship operating system, said Jonathan Schwartz, the company’s recently appointed president and chief operating officer.
“Maybe we’ll GPL it,” Schwartz said of Solaris, referring to the GNU General Public License under which the Linux operating system is distributed. “We’re still looking at that.”
Those are not words to be thrown around lightly. Of course it would be more logical for Solaris to bre released under a BSD-like operating system, as it was derived from BSD code. It is encouraging to see Sun thinking about such things.
Solaris no longer has the clout that it used to. People use it, sure, but many have migrated away from Solaris on Sparc hardware to a flavour of Linux on x86. I’m sure that an open-source version of Solaris would give it a lot of publicity. It may need such publicity in order to survive.
Solaris 9 (and a preview version of 10) can be downloaded for free, but a per-seat commercial license does apply.
Here’s another interesting tidbit:
Sun will likely move “very quickly” to a free licensing model where Solaris revenue would come from a paid subscription, Schwartz said. He wasn’t specific about when this might occur or what the pricing of such a model might be, other than to say it would be “less than Red Hat.”
“Less than Red Hat” still leaves a good bit of room to be overpriced though. Once again, I’m really stoked that Sun is thinking about such things, given how anti-open source they’ve been about Java. Keep up the intelligent decisions, Sun!
Via dailywireless by way of Wi-Fi Networking News, Ewrt looks like an excellent alternative firmware for the Linksys WRT54G. It was forked from the Sveasoft distro (the bleeding edge Samadhi2 stuff is now non-free) and includes NoCatSplash, traffic shaping, SSH/telnet management, and lots more.
This looks like a great alternative firmware for the WRT54G. The WRT54G is on the top of my tech to buy list. It’s so hackable.
XHTML in Easy Steps (subtitled Web Pages for the Desktop & Mobile Internet) is probably the best book on modern mobile markup that I’ve ever seen. The book is part of Barnes and Noble‘s in Easy Steps series. These books are $10, no BS guides to the subject covered.
They remind me of what I would have liked the Visual Quickstart Guide series of books to be. I’ve looked at serveral Visual Quickstart Guides, but have never been able to jive with the format and layout of the books. They feel too cluttered, and too “hey look what I can do” for my tastes.
In contrast, the in Easy Steps layout is simple but functional. There’s usually some full page text discussion at the beginning of the chapter, followed by several examples. A typical example page will consist of XHTML and CSS listings followed by (get this) the design as displayed by the Nokia browser as well as what it looks like in a shrunk down IE window.
How freaking cool is that? The author gets across basic XHTML markup concepts while keeping the user focused on “how is this going to look on a phone?”
The huge thing for me is the audience that this book is geared for. It’s not designed for bleeding edge developers who are eager to learn advanced mobile markup. This is a boook that your mom might pick up if she had the sudden need to learn XHTML. It’s going to be the cheapest tech book I’ll buy all year. It’s absolutely wonderful.
My hat is off to you, Mike McGrath and whoever is behind the in Easy Steps series. Good move. Freaking genius move.
Update: it looks like Barnes and Noble has exclusive distribution rights in the US, but the book can be purchased for under 8 GBP at Amazon.co.uk.
Rawdog has been segfaulting on me for awhile now. It was definitely not Adam Sampson’s fault, it was totally mine. I aparently copied and pasted an HTML link to my feed list instead of an RSS feed. Oops!
Anyway, I’ve not been able to get my RSS fix for some time, and I finally got around to writing a few lines of Python to diagnose the problem. In about 9 lines of code I’m able to read my config file line by line, check to see if the line represents a feed listing, grab the url from the line, print the feed url, and parse it using Mark’s feed parser (the same version that Rawdog is using).
The feed section of a Rawdog config file (usually in ~/.rawdog/config) can look like either of the following:
feed 60 http://postneo.com/rss.xml
feed 1h http://postneo.com/rss.xml
The top line is what the older version of Rawdog uses, the lower line is what newer versions of Rawdog uses. Luckily each line is “feed” + <time> + <url>, so the string can just be split and I can grab the URL with foo[2].
Here is the result of my two minute hack to figure out where the segfaults are coming from:
import feedparser
f=open('config', 'r')
for line in f.readlines():
if line.startswith('feed'):
foo = line.split()
print 'parsing ' + foo[2]
data = feedparser.parse(foo[2])
f.close()
This will skip over any comments (lines that start with #) and other directives in the Rawdog config file. I ended up making a backup, running the checker until I came across an error, commented out the offending feed in the backup file, and then removed all feeds in the file I was checking up to and including the offending feed. This way I wasn’t hammering feeds in the beginning of the list. Rinse, later, repeat. It wasn’t until down at the bottom that I found the link that was causing the segfault: a link to one of my posts. Sheesh.
But hey, with a few lines of python and a few minutes, I’m back up and running.
If you find or hear about an open source J2ME/MIDP library or app, it tends to either be extremely out of date (from 2001 and designed for early MIDP1.0) or so bleeding edge that it doesn’t work on most devices. I was pleasantly suprised to find KVMJab, a Jabber library for MIDP 1.0 (though it should work fine with MIDP 2.0), alive and kicking. There is a new release of the source code just a few days old that is updated to work with Sun’s Wireless Toolkit v2.1. It looks like much of the source has not been touched since late 2000 or early 2001, but if it works, it works.
Frisbee-throwers and lawmakers alike could soon be able to access free wireless Internet on Washington’s National Mall under a plan announced by a nonprofit group on Wednesday.
Members of the Open Park Project already have set up a wireless access point covering the Supreme Court and the Capitol and say they hope to extend wireless broadband coverage across the capital’s monument-filled core within a year.
Hey, that totally rocks. I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on The Open Park Project. The FCC already provides free Wi-Fi at their headquarters. Many local coffee houses also provide free Wi-Fi for their patrons. For-pay Wi-Fi is also abundant. There are 38 Starbucks locations, three Borders stores, and seven FedEx Kinko’s Office and Print Centers in the district. These are all T-Mobile hotspots that can be accessed for as little as $6 an hour.
Converge Digest has some stats on Verizon and Verizon Wireless’ Q1 2004 stats. Here are some of the highlights from last quarter:
Now here’s the biggie: Verizon customers sent 2.1 billion text messages in Q1 2004. They downloaded 19 million apps to their phones (directly through Verizon). They sent 21 million picture messages.
Those numbers are for one carrier (now the number 2 carrier in the US) over one quarter. The stats mentioned by the BBC yesterday were for all UK carriers in the month of March. We’re obviously not sending as many SMSes over here as they do in the UK, but we’re catching up fast.
SMS pricing structures also tend to be different over here. Most carriers offer SMS bundles. I’ve got an add-on for my T-Mobile plan that gets me 500 SMS messages for $2.99. Other carriers have similar plans, or you can just pay $0.10 a pop.
Dave Winer might not have a use for SMS (other than as an illustration for an RSS vs. Atom argument), but Americans are indeed sending text messages. Quite a few of them.
According to the Mobile Data Association (MDA), 2.1 billion text messages were sent in March 2004, a 25% rise on the total from the same month last year.
That is a lot of text messages. I mean more than a metric tonne of text messages. We’re talking more than a humpback whale of text messages.
If I were a Stupid American, I might not be able to fathom such a large number of text messages. Luckily I’m a mobile tech geek and that number excites me. In a big way.
If only we could figure out that your phone is capable of doing more than just talking. Stupid Americans…
Update:
<Moof> Netminder: you forgot the “at 5 cents a text, that’s $LOTS, or at 160 bytes a message, that’s $MUCHO per megabyte” at the end of your post
So true.
I reported on the purchase of Kinko’s by FedEx when it happened late December. Now FedEx is rebranding the stores:
Memphis-based FedEx said Monday the stores will be renamed FedEx Kinko’s Office and Print Center.
This is similar to what UPS did when it picked up Mail Boxes Etc. Good move again, FedEx, although the new name is a bit much to swallow. Something like FedEx Office Center or Kinko’s by FedEx would probably roll off the tongue a little better, but I understand the need to keep both FedEx and Kinko’s in the longer name. If they are smart, FedEx will keep the T-Mobile hotspots active.
I hate the IMs (instant messages), the paging, the PMs (personal messages), the private chats, the open chats, the IRC, AIM, ICQ, and MSN Messenger. I particularly despise the small talk that is an important part of chat, and I loathe all the phone SMS chatting and its entire infrastructure.
Dvorak has a rather clueless (but I’m sure valid in some situations) rant about chatting online. It’s not about the “hi. hi. how are you? fine.” conversations. It’s about communication.
Let’s take #mobitopia as an example. We’re a loose knit bunch of mobile tech enthusiasts sprinkled throughout the globe. During the day I can expect to chat with Jim. He routinely IRCs from his mobile phone during his morning and evening commute. I can check in with Matthew and Frank in Germany. I wonder if Martin in Scotland has managed to fix his Garmin Forerunner? When I’m starting to get hungry for lunch, Russ and other left-coasters start popping online. There are a few people that say “good morning” when I’m getting ready for bed. Erik doesn’t sleep much, so he’s always throwing my mental clock off.
On any given day we will communicate constructively. We trade links, ideas, opinions, thoughts. If Nokia is holding a press conference, chances are that Ewan, Rafe or Jim will have play by play coverage from a taco.
Of course we discuss other things (holy crap, did you see episode 18 of 24? What an ending!). We don’t talk tech 100% of the time. That would be too geeky! But the mobile shop talk and the sense of community that the channel and site have given us keep us coming back.
Via Freshmeat, RSS Reader MIDlet allows you to read RSS feeds on your MIDP1+ J2ME device. The UI seems to make a little more sense than Peek and Pick. P900 and 6600 users should also take a look at FeedBurner Mobile Feed Reader.
Via j2k in #mobitopia, Expansys lists a Nokia 6600i as a pre-release phone. What is the 6600i? My guess is that the 6600i is similar to the 6620 but for European markets. It will probably be the 6600 + 6620 enhancements/bugfixes + EDGE + more? + European frequencies.
I haven’t heard about this, but once it is officially announced, if it is for real, this page at Nokia should work. That is, of course, if the phone is for real.
So far I’ve only seen rumors (like the one at 6600.info), but nothing solid. Is this a case of Expansys hoping that the rumors are true, or do they know something that we do not?
SpecOps Labs has been getting a lot of press in the last few days after their “breakthrough” announcement. Their new software product will allow you to run Windows apps in Linux.
Pardon me, but haven’t you been able to do the same thing using Wine for years now? There are also commercial products like Crossover Office and Crossover Plugin if you have specific needs that are not neccesarily covered under Wine.
I know that Wine isn’t perfect. It can run some apps, but can’t run others. Hey, that’s life. I have a feeling that SpecOps’ David is going to be the same way. I’d love to be wrong, but I have a feeling that David is going to rock for some things and choke on others. Just like Wine.
I’m all about new technology, breaking new ground, and pushing the envelope. I just wish that the tech media would mention that many of the “revolutionary” things that SpecOps are claiming can already be done, and have been possible for years.