Posts by khess

Is it true that, if you speak up for GNU/Linux on the Desktop, you get flamed? I just had a virtual conversation with someone who claims that this assertion is fact. I've never experienced this anti-Desktop Linux sentiment or maybe my memory has failed me. I don't think the Linux Community would take a stand against it. The Apple Community is too glazed over with iCrap to care what we do. But, there is one "community" that might take issue with Linux on the Desktop. Who could it be? I'm having a little trouble coming up with the name, though I think it rhymes with Shmindows.

But, can we, the Linux Community, really point fingers at Shmindows fanboys and not take a little blame ourselves? We, I'm sorry to say, are equally guilty.

The problem is that over zealous fans of anything tend to be inflammatory when it comes to their favorite whatever it is. And, on top of that, these zealots feel as if they must comment on anything related to that favorite thing--often to the detriment of the entire project that they themselves defend. Unfortunately, the Internet provides everyone a virtual spray can with which they must "tag" their opinions on every virtual wall they find in opposition to their own narrow viewpoints.

But, you have to ask the question, "Why come out so strongly against something that someone chooses to use just because you disagree?" If you don't believe that it happens, just check …

Intego announced today that there is an actual virus threat to the invincible Mac: HellRTS.D Backdoor. Yep, that's right, a Mac virus just waiting to take control of your iThis and iThat. It would have been funnier if the virus had a better name, but hey, virus writers aren't necessarily all that clever. But it's a real virus and a real threat so you'd better watch out Mac addicts lest some evildoer takes over your iThingy and surfs over to some naughty site while your girlfriend is updating her Facebook page.

Of course, you can protect yourself with signature files from Intego's antivirus program. And, I know you have that don't you? No? Oh, that's right, you didn't think your Mac was virus vulnerable. Darn it.

I'd like to write a virus for a Mac that makes the single Mac mouse button emulate a two or three button mouse. Now that would be funny. Apple stores all over the world would be flooded with Mac nerds wondering how their Mac bling kept messing up with multiple clicks and right-click menus. Ah, the pandemonium that would ensue.

I would love to see a mall parking lot filled with Priuses sporting rainbow stickers and the Apple store all abuzz with granola-filled, sandal-wearing vegans in an uproar over the whole thing.

Sorry, just had a Mac fantasy there.

So, if your Mac seems like it has a mind of its …

What the hell is up with Oracle lately? First, they stopped giving away the Solaris operating system and now they have some big announcement planned for next week at the MySQL Conference. Should we hide our wallets before we listen? To me, Oracle has morphed into Microsoft II with all of its acquisitions and now its hold on those of us who use Solaris and MySQL. I don't know how loyal I'll continue to be to MySQL, if Oracle does something crazy with it.
Yes, they bought it. Yes, it's theirs. But, don't they have some sort of responsibility to its huge user base to remain faithful to its original charter?

We'll all find out on Tuesday during the conference. I won't be there in person but I'll certainly watch from the sidelines and hold my breath until the beatings stop.

I did recently write, "20 Reasons Why Oracle is the World's Largest Open Source Company." And, yes, they are but they aren't necessarily good stewards of that tremendous responsibility.

Instead of just complaining, I'll tell you what I'd like for Oracle to do.

1. Keep MySQL Free - Offer support as an option but don't require it as a condition of use.

2. Maintain OpenSolaris - OpenSolaris is a fine operating system with enterprise capabilities and features not found on any other system.

3. Fix Java - …

Now that Microsoft's big operating systems, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008, are on store shelves, is it time again for them to pick up the legal sledgehammer and go after Linux? I think the evidence for it is mounting. Microsoft has signed a deal with Novell, penned an agreement with Red Hat, sued and won against TomTom, signed a secret deal with Amazon, has lost costly suits against Uniloc and VirnetX and lost an appeal in its case against i4i. But this time, they're going to go for the jugular with a broad and sweeping patent infringement suite against major Linux adopters that haven't signed indemnification deals with them.

I'm not going to say directly who I think Microsoft is sharpening its legal blades for this time but you can bet that they are big names in the IT industry and they use a lot of Linux.

This next wave of suits will make the SCO suits look even more petty and ridiculous than they already were.

Will they win?

Who really wins in such law suits? The lawyers.

Who loses? Everyone including Microsoft and whomever they set their sites toward.

Microsoft hopes that these companies will want to settle peacefully, which ultimately means that the defendants will have to cough up millions of dollars in "licensing" fees. Their clever strategy is fight us in …

@nunojob and odoepner

It doesn't say Oracle 10g. It says Oracle 10g Express Edition. And yes, they (all listed projects) are open source. They are listed in their site as open source. I do know what it means and so do they.

As a FOSS (Free, Open Source Software) advocate, I find myself in a state of shock over what I've observed over the past ten or so years in this realm. If I asked you to name the most successful open source companies (Companies that derive the majority of their income from open source software), which ones would you name? Red Hat? Novell? MySQL? Canoncial? Those are all great answers. These three are perhaps the best known and most successful of all the companies that derive their incomes from open source software. Now, what if I asked you to name the most successful software companies in the world--closed or open source? Would your answers change? Yes, unfortunately, they would. In fact, the ten most successful software companies in the world are closed source ones.

I know that "success" is a relative term but I'm talking about success as measured in revenue dollars, stock prices and number of customers. You won't find one open source company among them.

Here are the ten in alphabetical order:

1. Adobe - Just about everyone who has a computer has used an Adobe product by choice or by need. The ubiquitous PDF (Portable Document Format) uses the Adobe Reader to do its presentation. Adobe features other development software such as the old Macromedia lineup and coldfusion.

2. Apple - Apple, the seductress of the computing world, is one of the …

Here's some buzz for you, Google Buzz is killing my GMail. I'm adding Google's Buzz to the top of the list of the worst tech ideas to come along in quite a while. I'm not a social networking fan, anyway, and to break my GMail, my primary email account, with something as stupid and useless as Buzz; I'm irritated. I usually wake up to 20 or more emails in my Inbox first thing in the morning. Today, I had one. Yes, one. I've sent numerous messages out today and I don't know if they're swirling about in some mail queue or if they've reached their destinations. Thanks Buzz. Thanks a lot.

I'm not sure that Google's tech people realized how much bandwidth a service like this uses. It's a lot. Just ask Twitter. It's especially bandwidth hungry because, unlike Twitter, Buzz doesn't limit you to 140 characters.

Great idea.

Poor execution.

It's poor execution in the sense that perhaps they (Google) should have limited Buzz updates to a few times per day. As far as I can tell, there are no limits on number of buzzes, size of buzzes or how often you can buzz.

I'm a happier person now that I've removed Buzz from my GMail account. Free yourself by following these simple steps to remove Buzz from GMail:

Click Settings in your GMail account. Select the Buzz link. Click the Disable Google Buzz link.
There …

@cantbebothered

Well, the exact details are too lengthy for a short entry and it happened a few years ago so the details are a bit fuzzy. For some reason this system had remained up and unpatched for an extended period of time. I can't give a lot of details too because of the confidentiality of the work done on this at my client's site. Just realize that we had good SAs and Sun available to us as an enterprise customer to solve these issues.

@weq
fdisk? Linux Journal? What are you talking about?

@aberriosdavila
What myths did I write?

And for some reason, my man page for su says substitute...

Others incorrectly use the term super user.

Show me that user on a *nix system. There are users and there is the root user. No super. I'm sorry,...you're not going to turn Latin into Italian for me by saying it wrong. Ah, that's me again, trying to educate. ;-)

@ultrapup

Thanks, you "get it." It must be my roots as a teacher that makes me want to challenge accepted thought and make people think a bit. A lot of people don't get it. They also don't get my offbeat and dry sense of humor. It takes time, I guess. Thanks for reading.

@jsp722

You're right, perhaps a poor choice of words. I guess the real fallout is that by writing this some people feel that I have some responsibility in causing it to happen and I don't, of course.

I think you guys are getting this all wrong. I'm not saying that I want this to happen but I think it will happen. I think that within the next couple of years, Internet access will be everywhere that you have cell phone access, XM radio access, etc. Satellites will provide that Internet everywhere access for our gadgets.
Your "operating system" if you want to call it that, will exist in the "cloud." Yes, I know that the "cloud" is marketing but people understand the concept so I have to use it. When in Rome, you know?
And, I'm afraid, that regardless of how much we all love it, the traditional desktop operating system's days are numbered.
To see the future, check out http://g.ho.st
Sure there will be things you can do in an unconnected state using something like portableapps.com.

I think you guys are getting this all wrong. I'm not saying that I want this to happen but I think it will happen. I think that within the next couple of years, Internet access will be everywhere that you have cell phone access, XM radio access, etc. Satellites will provide that Internet everywhere access for our gadgets.
Your "operating system" if you want to call it that, will exist in the "cloud." Yes, I know that the "cloud" is marketing but people understand the concept so I have to use it. When in Rome, you know?
And, I'm afraid, that regardless of how much we all love it, the traditional desktop operating system's days are numbered.
To see the future, check out http://g.ho.st
Sure there will be things you can do in an unconnected state using something like portableapps.com.

I have a feeling that the desktop operating system as we know it is on its last leg. The reason I make such a bold statement is that cloud computing will replace our fat, bloated, virus-riddled, failure-prone desktop with something far more agile and elegant: A lightweight browser-based system. This sounds like good news to me. I've waited for a server-centric world for several years now and the time is almost upon us. In this brave new cloud world, you'll have access to all of your documents, music, data, pictures and applications regardless of the device in your hands.

To see my in-depth analysis of this non-desktop environment, take a look at my recent article at Linux Magazine.

It's time for the traditional desktop operating system to go away. I'm actually surprised that they've lasted this long. Cloud computing will revolutionize the way we compute on a personal and professional basis. Any application you currently use has a web-based equivalent. If you don't believe me, search for it.

The next logical step is, once all applications are transitioned to web-based ones, to transition the access method--formerly known as a desktop--to a simple access method for those applications. This is one reason why I've begun referring to a desktop operating system as a user interface.

If you don't believe in the inevitability of this transition, take a look at what's going on with traditional desktop computing at companies such as Parallels,

Any list of best or worst will have its opponents and proponents and I foresee that this list of worst Linux distributions will be no different. There were, at last count, almost 300 Linux distributions and they all can't be great. But, this list of Linux distributions are, in my opinion, the worst of the lot. Beginning with the least offensive at number 10 to the least desirable at number 1, this list is a compilation of my opinions and experiences with various distributions over the past 15 years but only current distributions are included.

10. Security-enabled Distributions - If you want to get hacked and owned, just label your next distribution with the word 'Security' somewhere in its name or description and wait about 5 hours. Some offenders in this category are Astaro, NetSecL and Engarde Secure Linux. The biggest problem with these kinds of distributions is that they aren't updated regularly enough to provide the security that they tout.

9. Super-specialized Distributions - A couple of years ago I saw a Linux distribution called something like 8086 Linux. OK, I admit that it's cute but is it practical? Keep those kinds of distros in academia where practicality isn't important. The throwaways in this category include GeeXBoX, LinuxConsole and Zenwalk.

8. Minimal Desktop - How many of these do we need? Seriously, if you want a minimal desktop, install busybox, xfce or lxde and …

I downloaded and installed Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) and am happy to say it's an overall success. Of course, I would say that because I love Ubuntu; it's my favorite Desktop Linux distribution and I've seen a lot of them. Being Debian-based, it is rock-solid, stable, easily updatable and a pleasure to use. Canonical, Ubuntu's commercial benefactor, is a top-notch development company and a cool bunch of folks.

However, (and this is a big however) I don't really see that big of an improvement over previous versions. I use Ubuntu 8.04 and am perfectly satisfied with it. 9.04 has OpenOffice.org 3.x but so what? I can install that myself.

I don't really see any major improvements. It looks the same. It feels the same. Same applications. Same everything.

Sometimes I feel that whomever is responsible for putting out new distributions feels they must just because it's time to do so. Ubuntu updates every six months whether it needs to or not. No, I'm not disappointed or disenchanted but am a little curious as to why it's such a big deal.

Should you upgrade to 9.04? Sure, why not. If you already have Ubuntu, you'll certainly recognize everything and won't see much difference but it won't hurt either. If you're looking for a Linux Desktop distribution to use, this is a fine one. You'll love its sleek design, easy-to-use interface (GNOME) and plentiful applications.
It has everything you need in …

And there should only be one brand of gasoline, cracker, printer, car, etc.

This is an intro tutorial that is supposed to be placed in the tutorial section and not here. Sorry for the intrusion.

Programming in PHP is fun and easy. It is a very powerful scripting language that takes simple HTML and turns it into a fully-interactive experience for the web user. Let's get started!

Note: These tutorials assume that you have a working web server that's capable of displaying PHP code and that you have PHP installed on that web server system or that you're using a server that is equipped and ready.
You can run PHP on Windows. You can even use PHP with IIS (The Windows Web Server) so you don't necessarily need Unix/Linux and Apache.

PHP Reference

Your best reference for all things PHP is the PHP web site: www.php.net. Go there and bookmark it--you'll refer to it often.

PHP Speaks HTML

The first thing you have to learn and always remember is that if you use even one line of PHP code in an HTML file, you must name the file with a .php extension. The .php extension tells the web server that this file is special and needs special handling by the PHP executable and related libraries.

Delimit Your PHP

Second, all PHP functions and code must be inserted between the following delimiters

<? php code ?>

--the less than question mark opens the code and the question mark greater than close. You must always use delimiters in pairs--an opening delimiter and closing delimiter. Delimiters are symbols that tell the web server what kind of content follows …