Next Podcast Delayed – New RPM posted to the LQ Mirror

November 23, 2004 Leave a comment

Well, I was about to do my next podcast, when Audacity starting locking up (out of nowhere). It seemed to be ALSA related, and I decided to reboot into a new Fedora kernel (which I had been putting it off). Lo and behold, upon reboot my display doesn't work. As you may have guessed, the machine has an NVIDIA card. I check the logs, and I see a bunch of:
nvidia: Unknown symbol __VMALLOC_RESERVE
A bit of Googling later and I find out this problem was introduced in 2.6.9, upon which the latest FC2 kernel is based. Since none of the RPMs around seem to have the fix in them, I decided to roll an RPM based off the livna one and post it on the LQ mirror. If you have any problems with it, let me know. …now to see if Audacity works.
–jeremy

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No Software Patents: Linus Torvalds, Michael Widenius and Rasmus Lerdorf Appeal to the EU Council

November 23, 2004 Leave a comment

Linus Torvalds, Michael Widenius and Rasmus Lerdorf have started www.NoSoftwarePatents.com. While Europe and the EU are the particular focus now, it's an issue everyone should be concerned with. The patent system is one that could have helped protect small companies in theory, but in reality it's turned into a system that is abused by large companies and stifles innovation. You can visit this page to brush up on the basis of the issue.
–jeremy

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Coming Soon – GPL 3

November 22, 2004 Leave a comment

While no release date has been set, the next version of the GPL is now being worked on. From the article:
The changes planned for the next release, Version 3, a draft of which is due next year, focus on several broad topics that reflect the dynamic change in the software industry since the early 1990s—intellectual property licensing and patent issues, the question of how to deal with software used over a network, and concerns around trusted computing.
I wonder if a new version of the GFDL is also being worked on. I've contacted the FSF and CC in the past to see if a level of compatibility between the CC by-sa and the GFDL was possible, and both sides said it was something they would like to work toward. Hopefully they are making some progress on that, as it would really benefit the LQ Wiki (which would benefit the Linux community at large, ideally).
–jeremy

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Another LQ Podcast Test

November 18, 2004 6 Comments

Here's another test of the podcast setup we'll be using. We're almost ready to go live with this, but I'm still looking for feedback on this! Thanks.
–jeremy

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Microsoft's Ballmer Warns Asia of Linux Lawsuits

November 18, 2004 Leave a comment

Gotta love Steve.. I really think he does more to hurt Microsoft than he does to help sometimes (not that I mind). I wonder what MSFT employees think of him? From the article:
Ballmer, speaking in Singapore at Microsoft's Asian Government Leaders Forum, said that Linux violated more than 228 patents. He did not provide any detail on the alleged violations, which the Linux community disputes.
“Someday, for all countries that are entering the WTO (World Trade Organization), somebody will come and look for money owing to the rights for that intellectual property,” he added.
Has he forgotten that many Asian countries (some of which hate each other) are working together on a Linux distro? …and that countries outside the USA don't have to follow our laws? …and that the concept of IP to a communist country is quite odd?? …and that – we'll you get the idea. Also from the article:
“We think our software is far more secure than open-source software. It is more secure because we stand behind it, we fixed it, because we built it. Nobody ever knows who built open-source software,” he added.
Now that is interesting logic. You can evidentially throw the historical security record of an OS out the window, as long as the company that wrote it will “stand behind” it. Tell that to the 10's of thousands of Windows zombie machines spewing spam to everyone. Unreal!
DEVELOPERS – DEVELOPERS – DEVELOPERS ;)
–jeremy

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Linux Vendors Partner to Further Standards

November 17, 2004 Leave a comment

Conectiva, Mandrakesoft, Progeny, and Turbolinux announced an agreement today to base products on a common implementation of LSB 2.0. The Linux Core Consortium (LCC) should have the framework (the common core) available in the first quarter of 2005. How does this differ from the now defunct (and never really active) UnitedLinux, which Conectiva and Turbolinux were both members of, you may ask? Mandrakesoft has addressed this very question for us:
Is this just another UnitedLinux attempt?
UnitedLinux was based on the premise of four geographically dispersed Linux companies developing a common enterprise product for customers and partners. However, UnitedLinux was a closed organization that relied on the engineering of a single company.
LCC builds on the notion that working together on a common core still makes sense, but not in a closed environment. LCC invites all Linux companies to join. Red Hat, Novell, Sun, and Asianux have already been invited. Also, LCC will be based on the LSB, which already enjoys wide support in the industry.
Interestingly, both Red Hat and Novell have shown support for the LCC, but have not chosen to join. Both were indeed invited to do so. Should be interesting to see how this plays out. I think the fact that it is based on the already accepted LSB means they already have a nice head start on acceptance. One encouraging goal they have is increasing interoperability between and Debian and RPM-based technologies and working toward a common binary core that can form the basis of both Debian and RPM-based distributions. The differences in packaging formats is the source of many incompatibilities between distros today. Getting the best features of both RPM and deb into a single compatible system would be fantastic.
–jeremy

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Interesting Idea After the LQ Podcast is in Production

November 17, 2004 Leave a comment

I'm listening to a podcast from Adam Curry and it seems you can podcast a Skype conference call. Having a couple LQ mods be able to participate in a discussion, for free over VOIP, and then having the ability to share that conference call with the world seems like it has a ton of potential. First step though is getting the podcast off the ground, which I am working on. Luckily, it's almost there. I'll hopefully have a longer test up over the next couple of days.
—jeremy

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Aformentioned TiVo News

November 17, 2004 Leave a comment

As I mentioned yesterday, some TiVo news was expected today. Well, it's just been posted. TiVo will now play commericlas, while you are fast forwarding other commercials. From the article:
By March, TiVo viewers will see “billboards,” or small logos, popping up over TV commercials as they fast-forward through them, offering contest entries, giveaways or links to other ads. If a viewer “opts in” to the ad, their contact information will be downloaded to that advertiser — exclusively and by permission only — so even more direct marketing can take place.
Nice. Looks like I will be giving MythTV a shot in the near future. Wonder what Nat Brown thinks of all this ;) Incidentally, the creator of MythTV is the next LQ Interview.
–jeremy

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Former Microsoft Exec Joins Open Source Project

November 16, 2004 Leave a comment

Looks like Nat Brown, one of the Microsoft employees involved in the famed Haloween Document, is now the CTO of CAC Media – a company that sells Open Source software and services. Two interesting quotes from Brown:
“There were a lot of us that talked about open-source casually in e-mail, and the memo synthesized a lot of those discussions,” he said. “My thought was that there's this beautiful thing with open-source where, as a developer, there's a very low barrier to entry. The flexibility that gives you is really incredible.”
“I'd been talking with Microsoft about going back to work on the Windows infrastructure. But the company is just very, very big, and the opportunity to have (an) impact and really execute on your ideas is very limited.”
It should be interesting to watch the direction that Brown, who helped shape Microsoft's initial response to Linux, will take CAC Media. One of their main products is software that creates a “device that does more than a TiVo-style video recorder but without the complexity and expense of a PC running Microsoft's Windows XP Media Center operating system.” I'm going to have to take a closer look at that. On an interesting side note, there may be some bad news coming tomorrow for TiVo fans – stay tuned.
–jeremy

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Quick & Dirty Backups – Linux Magazine Article

November 16, 2004 Leave a comment

I have gotten a ton of feedback on my most recent Linux Magazine article – “Quick and Dirty Backups”. Thanks to everyone who responded. Hopefully the article will end up saving some data! I really appreciate that many readers shared with me their backup strategies and experiences. If you have a quality method or interesting story you'd like to share, feel free to post it in this thread. One reader even asked that I share a script that has worked well for him. I'm happy to oblige(thanks goes to Eric Nichols for the script).
–jeremy

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