Open Source

Why Can’t I?
The First Lesson

“Can I?” versus “May I?”

Me: “Can I eat a bowl of ice cream?” My daddy’s answer: “You can but you may not.”

If you grew up with my parents, this answer was part of your introduction to both sarcasm and grammar.

That question/answer gives us an example of one of the most basic ACTION TESTS we must employ when considering whether or not to “do” a certain “thing”. The simplest of all Action Legitimacy Tests – when you are able to do it but it is not right to do it. Wrong time, wrong place, wrong idea…  You can jump off the tenth-floor balcony onto the roof of your car but you may not because it will kill you.

Think of some more examples. You have three seconds. You’re not dumb; you’ve figured this out already, haven’t you?

BASIC ACTION TEST #1

OPPORTUNITY + ABILITY does not always = ACTION

We’ll be discussing this and other Action Tests throughout the coming week.

Your homework? Apply this test to reading or downloading proprietary code.

BUY! Adobe ® Flash® 9 browser plug-in has been one of the most wanted features requested by the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet users. The upgrade to Adobe® Flash® 9 browser plug-in opens the door to many rich media websites and considerably improves web usability. It also improves substantially the media performance when using video streaming services.

For more information head over to http://www.adobe.com/go/opensourceflex. Details can be found from their pressrelease.

Gives Developers Ability to Enhance Flex Framework for Delivering Rich Internet Applications

Guess this sounds better than “Silverlight caught us off guard”.

The Ubuntu team is proud to announce the beta release of Ubuntu 7.04.

Ubuntu 7.04 is the most user-friendly Ubuntu to date and includes a
ground-breaking Windows migration assistant, excellent wireless
networking support and improved multimedia support.

Ubuntu 7.04 server edition adds support for hardware facilities that
speed up the use of virtual machines as well as other improved
hardware support, making it an excellent choice as a web, database,
file and print server, the fastest growing area of Linux server use.

Desktop highlights
——————

Windows migration tool: The new migration tool recognises Internet
Explorer bookmarks, Firefox favourites, desktop wallpaper, AOL IM
contacts, and Yahoo IM contacts, and imports them into Ubuntu during
installation. This offers easier and faster migration for new users of
Ubuntu and individuals wanting to run a dual-boot system.

Easy-to-install codec wizards: A new guided wizard for installing
codecs not shipped with Ubuntu gives users a safe way of installing
codecs they can legally use to view multimedia content.

Plug and play network sharing with Avahi: This new feature allows
users to automatically discover and join a wireless network and share
music, find printers and more.

Server highlights
—————–

Virtualisation support: On x86 systems with the Intel VT or AMD-V
extensions, Kernel-based Virtual Machine support (KVM) allows users to
run multiple virtual machines running unmodified Linux. Each virtual
machine has private virtualised hardware: a network card, disk,
graphics adapter, and so on. We have also added VMI support, which
provides optimised performance under VMWare.

Edubuntu highlights
——————-

Thin client: Edubuntu integrates the latest thin client technology out
of the box. Edubuntu Classroom Server consists of two CDs, a server
image and a server add-on image with additional education applications
and languages.

Improved documentation: The Edubuntu handbook with tips and best practices for educators and educational IT administrators is included.

Thin Client highlights
———————-

Print and sound support: Jetpipe, a new printing architecture for thin
clients, greatly improves on previous technologies.  Sound support in
applications is also dramatically improved with the PulseAudio sound
server.

Thin client management: Administrators can now manage thin client
connections to a server more easily.

Other
—–

* On the Desktop: GNOME 2.18, OpenOffice.org 2.2.0rc3, X.org 7.2

* On the Server: Apache 2.2, PostgreSQL 8.2, PHP 5.2.1, LTSP 5.0

* “Under the hood”: GCC 4.1.2, glibc 2.5, Linux 2.6.20, Python 2.5

The full release notes can be found at
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FeistyFawn/Beta

About Ubuntu
————

Ubuntu is a Linux distribution for your desktop, laptop, thin client
and server, with a fast and easy install. The Ubuntu project makes no
separation between our free edition and our enterprise edition - this
is our best work and it is freely available.

Used by businesses, home users, schools and governments around the
world, Ubuntu offers regular releases, a tight selection of excellent
packages installed by default and professional commercial technical
support from Canonical Ltd and hundreds of other companies.

Ubuntu 7.04 will be supported for 18 months on both the desktop and on
the server.  Upgrades to new releases will always be free of charge.

To Get Ubuntu 7.04 Beta
———————–

Download Ubuntu 7.04 Beta here (choose the mirror closest to you):

Europe:

http://se.releases.ubuntu.com/7.04 (Sweden)
http://es.releases.ubuntu.com/7.04 (Spain)
http://nl.releases.ubuntu.com/7.04 (The Netherlands)
http://ftp.snt.utwente.nl/pub/linux/ubuntu/7.04 (The Netherlands)
http://ie.releases.ubuntu.com/7.04 (Ireland)
http://it.releases.ubuntu.com/7.04 (Italy)
http://pl.releases.ubuntu.com/7.04 (Poland)
http://de.releases.ubuntu.com/7.04 (Germany)
http://bg.releases.ubuntu.com/7.04 (Bulgaria)

Australia:

http://au.releases.ubuntu.com/7.04

Africa:

http://za.releases.ubuntu.com/7.04 (South Africa)

Rest of the world:

http://releases.ubuntu.com/7.04 (Great Britain)

Please download using Bittorrent if possible.

To upgrade from Ubuntu 6.10 to Ubuntu 7.04 Beta, follow these
instructions:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FeistyUpgrades

The final version of Ubuntu 7.04 is expected to be released in
April 2007.

Known Bugs
———-

* Resizing ext2/ext3 file systems may fail unless a full file system
check has just been run. To work around this, run ‘e2fsck -f
DEVICE’ (where DEVICE is the name of the device in question, such
as /dev/sda1) and retry the resize operation after that
completes. When using the desktop CD, you can run this from a
terminal window; when using the alternate install CD, you can
press Alt-F2 to get to a terminal, and Alt-F1 to return to the
installer.  https://launchpad.net/bugs/94647

* Systems with JMicron IDE(PATA) chipsets may experience a crash on
boot. This was not fixed in time for beta release, but a planned
kernel upload just after release will rectify the problem. A work
around has not been tested, but would involve blacklisting the
`generic` kernel module.  https://launchpad.net/bugs/84964

Feedback and Helping
——————–

If you would like to help shape Ubuntu, take a look at the list of
ways you can participate at

http://www.ubuntu.com/community/participate/

Your comments, bug reports, patches and suggestions will help turn
this Beta into the best release of Ubuntu ever.  Please report bugs
through the Launchpad bug tracker:

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/feisty/+bugs

If you have a question, or if you think you may have found a bug but
are not sure, first try asking on the #ubuntu IRC channel on FreeNode,
on the Ubuntu Users mailing list, or on the Ubuntu forums:

http://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-users
http://www.ubuntuforums.org/

More Information
—————-

You can find out more about Ubuntu and about this preview release on
our website, IRC channel and wiki. If you are new to Ubuntu, please
visit:

http://www.ubuntu.com/

When responding to someones post, especially when it pertains to anything Internet, Linux or other geeky subjects, you… OK - deep breath.

A week or so ago I jokingly posted a rant about installing Joost on Linux. So far only Brent & a spammer have responded. The comment from the spammer dealt with increasing the size of my & * ( < - I'm not too concerned about that so that comment was deleted. Brent on the other hand had this to say.

http://www.macewan.org/2007/03/05/how-to-install-joost-on-linux/

In the defense of Joost, as a beta user of it, and as a Linux user, I say this. This is still an invitation only beta product. They have said that they plan to make a Linux version. These people have made a native Skype client, so I’d say that it is safe to assume that they will also do the same for Joost.

This program is not in it’s infancy. It’s not even born yet. I’d give it some time dude. Plus one must face the fact that the most downloads of Joost will most likely be for Windows, followed by OSX. Therefore, this demand must be satisfied first.

Secondly, if it is to be installed with wine is that terrible, as long as it works? I find Google’s Picasa to be a nice bit of software, despite the fact that it requires wine. It still works just as well as in Windows.

I’m willing to bet that in time, we will see a native Linux Joost client, that is if this Joost hype truly takes off. So far, it isn’t that great yet, imho. It is not going to replace cable tv anytime soon.

Just my two cents, but I hope this gives a bit of reason to the doubt.

Thanks.

Wow, that was so thoughtful Brent. Thank you so much for taking the time to reply with such a well written reply to my obviously ill informed ignorant rant. At times I need that.

There are however a couple of things that I just did not comprehend with you reply. You mentioned Joost still being in beta. Maybe I’m getting old, just turn 39 :), but I still call it The Venice Project. That was the project name back when I got my invite. Silly me and my old ways. Doesn’t matter. Being so full of knowledge I decided that maybe I could search the forums to hopes of grabbing more of your know-how, but I couldn’t find you.

You see my problem. Things are just difficult for me to grasp at times. As a Linux user you probably know that we’ve been asking about our flavor of the Venice Project for quite awhile. Checking today I see that there are 279 postings after searching* the topic.

On the subject of using WINE to run Google software - I don’t really mind that much. Back in 2005 when I wrote of how to install Google Earth on Linux good ole WINE was required. Even last summer when I wrote an update WINE was required. And if you do a search for Google Earth Linux you’ll see them still mention WINE. Go ahead and look. As far as Picasa the image software goes, I prefer standard Linux software on that. Maybe trying F-Spot from time to time, but it’s written in C# on the Mono platform and yes, I know, a *nix version of the .N37 development platform seems kinda icky keep in mind it is an ISO standard which gives it a couple of tiny thumbs up. At least with me it does.

As far as native Joost goes… with the OS-X version running behind the Windows version just as it was in the Skype situation I have little faith in a native Lin* version any time soon. But don’t loose hope - we’ve been installing with WINE from time to time so there is a light at the end of the tunnel. That is if you want to watch tv on your computer. Me? I have a TV card that works no problem when I care to kill my brain cells.

*note: you’ll need to join the forum to actually join the search which in itself is a rather interesting subject. At first we didn’t have a search function. We asked and asked for a search. Funny thing is that shortly after I posted a link to information on adding the search function to this forum software - they found the same thing and added it.

my post of how to add search:

Re: Search function in this forum

http://api.pocoo.org/pocoo.pkg.core.search-module.html

Robert MacEwan

• Posts: XXXXXXXXXX
• Registered: XXXXXXXXX
• Posted on: Sun, 11 Feb 2007 15:12

a posting that search has been added:

Re: Search Function for the Forum

Search the Forum is now in the header of the forum - in the image

Story Charms

• Posts: XXXXXXX
• Registered: XXXXXXXX
• Posted on: Wed, 21 Feb 2007 18:19

sorta cool timing.

Again, thank you for your reply.

cheers,
macewan

The L.A.M.P.er job in Raleigh looks more attractive when compared to this position in Manhattan. With $25 an hour bringing you to somewhere in the high 40s this is basicly matching the lower end of the scale of the NY position at $50,000. However, automobile expenses will eat 8 to 9 thousand from the Raleigh job. New York City looks attractive until you consider the $2,500 a month for rent.

You know what… just do what makes you happy. Below I’ve included  details of the NYC L* job.

Minimum Required Skills:
PHP Software Development, Apache, MySQL, Unix/Linux, AJAX, Ruby, Web 2.0, Web Services, Web Portals, Educational/E-Learning Software

PHP Software Developer - Apache, MySQL, Linux, AJAX

Based in beautiful New York City, NY, we are a top Online Learning Management solutions provider for the healthcare and education industries. We are small, yet very stable and quite profitable thanks to our commitment to providing our clients with State-of-the-Art technology. Due to growth, we are currently seeking to hire 2 talented Mid-Sr. Level Object-Oriented PHP Developer that also possesses expertise in Linux and MySQL, but can learn anything presented before him or her. If this sounds like you, we would love to hear from you immediately.

Must Have Skills:
1.) Expert level programming skills in PHP (4/5), Linux or Unix, Apache, and MySQL.

2.) 2+ years of experience with MySQL and/or SQL Server is required. You should be able to write efficient queries and optimize database-intensive applications.

3.) BS in Computer Science, Information Technology, or related. Master’s degree is a plus.

Nice to Have Skills:
1.) Linux System Administration is a plus.
2.) Database Design is a plus.
3.) Experience with Ruby, Web 2.0, and Ajax would be extremely helpful.
4.) DHTML, Javascript, CSS is a plus.
5.) Experience with the following is helpful: Online Learning, Document Management, Online Libraries, E-Commerce, Backend Marketing, etc.

Hrm, sounds like everyone and their brother.