Linux

Despite the 'like' I have for my Gateway ML6720, it places limitations on me that even the later Gateway Dual Core 1.73GHz 1GB 160GB DVD/RW 15.4-Inch Vista can't address. My life is anything but simple and docile.

In an average day, I may be out rattling through the bush with the 4x4, checking on my corn and other things. While I'm down there, I may run across tenants who want information on things, which I have all electronically stored and encrypted on a memory stick or two. From there, I might head off to a lawyer's office, or to the revenue office, or to a wireless hotspot, or to the University of the West Indies, or to the beach, or... In essence, my entire life requires a rugged existence that I worry to put my present laptop through.

I'm a bastard when it comes to durability. I maintain my equipment well, but some equipment just falls away - and when it comes to data, and the ability to write when inspiration strikes, I need something that can handle being in a pickup that gets flipped in the bush while cutting a new 'road'. Not that this has happened, but it could. I've almost done it. Seriously.

Then there's the administration of websites - CaribNexus.net is coming next - which should be done whenever possible. A simple login to make sure that the spaminating idiots out here haven't taken over the site is usually important... and catastrophic failures are something to keep an eye out for.

So I need a new device that: { Read more }

• Is light and fairly rugged. A solid state drive is viewed as a necessity.
• Has an interface that won't irk me.
• Is wireless enabled, and can allow me to transfer data from my other systems via USB.
• Crams as much power as possible into a light footprint.
• Isn't more than $500.

While everyone has been going bonkers over the OLPC, it seems some folks in the-place-that-occupies-Tibet have truly made a $100 laptop:

In October, Shenzhen China-based HiVision will ship a MIPs-based Linux mini-notebook for $98. The company is currently offering a similar machine for $120, according to a video blog report from the Internationale Funkausstellunga (IFA) consumer electronics show in Berlin this week.

HiVision's current offering, the "mini-Note," appears to use one of the several MIPS-based processors now available from Chinese semiconductor vendors. It may use a Longsoon-2F chip, or perhaps the Ingenic Jz4740 Multimedia Application Processor, which powers Bestlink's $250 ($180 in volume) Alpha 400 mini-notebook and 3K's $300 RazorBook 400-Mini-Notebook, two other Linux-based models out of China. Both processors use MIPS-like cores...

Here's a link to the product.

Well, there it is - one of my predictions has come true. The OLPC's die-hardest advocates will say that the OLPC has a different mission, and yet that mission hasn't been very well documented and/or supported via infrastructure.

One laptop per child? Sure. Go for it. But the answer has never been in the laptops themselves, has it?

Back in February of 2005, I headed up to Boston for Linux World as the Editor of LinuxGazette.com - I looked a tad different - and one of the last parts of the show I got to see was Kirix Strata. I wrote about it on the now gone LinuxGazette.com site, as I recall, and I remember seeing Kirix Strata as a solution waiting for problems. I had a licensed copy, but never seemed to have the right problems to toss at it.

Ken Kaczmarek, who I met at the show, dropped me a note about a post from the Kirix blog which he thought I would find interesting: it deals with the all too often forgotten Benford's Law. In a nutshell, Benford's Law states that in lists of numbers from many non-artificial sources of data, the leading digit is distributed in a specific, non-uniform way. Take a look at the video for a better understanding.

Pretty Cool On A Few Different Levels

Aside from the ease of use of Kirix Strata demonstrated in conjunction with Benford's Law, I was impressed with a few other things. First, I hadn't been paying attention to Kirix because I've been busy with other things - and I didn't even know that they had a blog. Next, the whole demonstration of Benford's Law is probably the best true piece of marketing I have seen - not because it will make you want to buy the software, but because it demonstrates Kirix Strata with some real data in a context that gives Kirix Strata a voice. I'm not a fan of most methods of marketing, but this may well educate a few people in some cool math while showing a bit of Strata's muscle without it ripping it's shirt off. The video uses data from the Census Bureau, the Wikipedia and Digg.com itself. { Read more }

I've been playing with a concept off and on, but have been too busy paying bills to move ahead with it. TechCrunch's 'We Want A Dead Simple Web Tablet' comes close, but isn't exactly what I want. What I want is actually something that I play with off and on, and would be based off of a lightweight Linux distribution that would be in the background - only to be seen if someone actually wants to. As Torvalds said, the operating system shouldn't matter to the user. I tend to agree.

My plan, which has been delayed for years, is to take the muscle of FireFox's big and more worthwhile brother, SeaMonkey, combine it with a solid Content Management System such as Drupal, OpenOffice.org or Google Docs (likely both) - and let it fly from there. So what do we have then? We have my old dream: Getting away from all the desktop nonsense and getting to what I want. All of this would be able to run on desktop machines, laptops and tablets - and perhaps in the future, mobile phones (using the .mob CSS).

What features would it have? Seamonkey gives it this: { Read more }

• Tabbed browser with the Mozilla engine - the same one that the unruly mob uses in Firefox and insists is better than Internet Explorer.
• Integrated email with address book capability - something you could get with Thunderbird, but if it is integrated already, what do you need Thunderbird for?
• IRC client built in - Chatzilla.
• HTML editor for what would be 'skinning', as well as mundane HTML editing.

When a friend sent me a link to the blog entry, Sic Transit Gloria Laptopi, I expected a continuation of the OLPC Meme that would not die. I was in for a bit of a surprise, and even as I was getting ready to go about some business that allows me to get into sunlight I found it necessary to pause and write this answering entry.

Frankly, the whole issue of the OLPC is more a matter of marketing than actual headway - it's sort of like discussing which politician is best to become President when the acid test is putting them into the Institution of the Presidency itself - not whether they can charm the underwear off of an easily manipulated media. The reality that most see is what the media presents. The actual reality, the one that is real, is the one that the media shades be it consciously or not. When the New York Times writes an apology for poor coverage which may have swayed opinion on the invasion of Iraq, there should be little doubt of the power of media swing to do things, good or bad, for the wrong reasons. A course is not charted by one point. A course is charted by many, and the direction is guided by reasons.

Back to the subject at hand. I agree with Ivan on some things he wrote: { Read more }

A subtle shift has happened. Once upon a time, when Richard Stallman's beard was about the same length, the focus of Linux and Open Source in business was on saving money. Those of you who have lived through the evolution of Linux as well as the Open Source and Free Software communities know what I'm talking about. One of the biggest selling points for Linux has been that it cost nothing - which more seasoned folk knew could not possibly be true. TANSTAAFL. But it was, at the least, free as in beer for most users around the world - and it remains so at least partly because of funded work on Linux. No, no, not the SCO people who are playing Marconi to Linux's Tesla - the real companies.

The shift started happening around late 2004 to late 2005 when I was appalled to read people I know writing about how many Linux Servers were sold. Linux doesn't work that way, really, so counting Linux servers is sort of like counting grains of sand at the beach. It just doesn't work. But there it was, servers that IBM and others sold with Linux on them were held up as trophies, something to be bronzed and polished with admiring eyes. I'm sure plenty of servers were sold with that other operating system that got switched over as well. But people like to count things, media needs numbers to report, and lo! Statistics were available.

And now, the talk is about the $49 billion dollar Linux ecosystem. So now, success isn't measured by the amount saved - but the amount spent. When did that happen?

Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss. Media shapes the idols, and those who need religion go find them.

Via , I came across Open LINA:

LINA enables Linux applications to run on Windows, Mac OS X, and UNIX operating systems with native look and feel. GUI applications running on LINA are indistinguishable from the other applications on the user's machine because they utilize the native libraries of the underlying operating system. LINA integrates native Linux command line applications directly into the DOS, Mac OS X, or UNIX console. The configuration files of Web applications that run on LINA are fully accessible and editable.

You can read more here. I'll be trying it out; having Linux command line in the DOS prompt is a dream I've had that is the equivalent of dreams that adolescents don't talk about. This is really something useful, I think, and will also allow Linux users more power over a Windows environment.

Whether it lives up to my hopes or not is yet to be determined - but... just the command line alone would be awesome for me.

You can download LINA for OS X, Windows XP and Vista, as well as some Linux distros if you're feeling adventurous.

This member of the Open LINA jury is now in deliberations. :-)

I must have my calendar wrong. We just got past Valentine's Day, and Halloween is here already - SCO announced that it is clawing its way out of the grave with an injection of financing from Stephen Norris Capital Partners and some Middle East dollars.

Enter the Oil for 'Intellectual Property' Program, I suppose.

As Mark Radcliffe points out, this is terribly puzzling:

...The announcement is puzzling because SCO's principal assets were its UNIX rights (the scope of which are unclear). Yet, a court decision in August rejected all of SCO's claims to enforce copyrights in Linux that it claimed to own. The court rejected both SCO's contract claims for breach of the UNIX license agreements against existing UNIX licensees, such as IBM, and for copyright infringement of UNIX copyright by users of Linux (the court found that Novell owned the copyright in UNIX software and had not assigned it to SCO. In my 25 years of practice, the SCO decision was one of three most dramatic failures of an intellectual property strategy. The decision also made clear that SCO knew about these problems when they launched their litigation against IBM because they tried to get Novell to confirm the transfer of the copyrights. Apparently, we have not heard the end of this story...

OK, so I wasn't going insane. I was certain that SCO had been put out of its mystery - and it must be Halloween, because this is reminiscent of 'Bride of Frankenstein'. Why give a dead body that much juice? Where's the punch line?

Stephen Norris seems optimistic: { Read more }