Facebook has “opened” their server technology and announced the creation of the Open Compute Project to distribute this intellectual capital.

Cheers,
-pmh

The first article is Ubuntu is a Poor Standard Bearer for Linux but you need to read the follow up article, How Canonical Can Do Ubuntu Right to get a fair understanding of her position.

Cheers,
-pmh

It was not as easy as it could have been.

Had I been running Windows at the time it would have been semi-automatic, of course. But, no, I was running Kubuntu – the KDE version of the popular Ubuntu Linux – and I had never reached out to my old HP ScanJet in that environment before.

Naturally, I googled official Kubuntu documentation. The documentation said “Software wise Kubuntu comes with the application Kooka, the KDE scanning and OCR installed”… and then told me exactly where in the menu system to find Kooka.

No such luck.

Google’s top hit was out of date documentation. There is no Kooka in the LTS 10.4 Kubuntu version.

Next I turned to Ubuntu.org’s documentation where there were pointers to the Kubuntu distribution. (Generally, Ubuntu assumes you are running Gnome rather than KDE so Kubuntu stuff can be off in the corner somewhere and the big Search field at the top of the page will not be of much help.)

Anyway, here I found reference to SANE (‘Scanner Access Now Easy’) the full-featured Linux package. This is so full-featured, however, that it comes with a huge list of dependencies – related packages that are required for SANE to install. There were so many of these that it looked as if much of Gnome had to be installed before SANE would work.

So I continued my research.

Finally, I came across a discussion group posting that pointed out Open Office had built-in scanning functionality under the ‘Insert-Picture-Scan’ menu sequence… so this is what I used.

I could also have installed ‘Simple Scan’ from the Kubuntu software package list but I already had Open Office on my system so I avoided adding more software by using that.

What is the moral of this story? With desktop Linux, even the most simple tasks require some research.

I should mention that I went through a similar exercise to get Kubuntu to ‘see’ my printer. I did not have that issue with mainstream Ubuntu.

Cheers,
-pmh

No need for links, just search on ‘pubsubhubbub’… all hits will be relevant! -LOL
-pmh

Yes We Scan - Carl Malamud

The other day The Portable Consultant caught this interview with Carl Malamud on an IT Conversations podcast. Having enjoyed his 1992 book Exploring the Internet: A Technical Travelogue, I was interested to hear that he is still pursuing his attempts to free public information from the reluctant hands of bureaucrats. In Exploring the Internet, he discussed his attempts to get the International Standards Organization to distribute international standards over the nascent Internet. Now he’s running for the position of Public Printer of the United States, a public office for which only one other person has bothered to run since it’s inception under President Lincoln.

Yesterday I attempted to print some Canadian tax changes, from a recent budget, that might affect my taxes next year. They are found on an ordinary web page almost entirely made up of text.

Adobe’s Acrobat 9 Pro Extended failed to print the page in my Firefox browser and issued the following error:

%%[Page: 14]%%%%[ Error: LucidaSans,Bold cannot be embedded because of licensing restrictions. ]%%
%%[ Font vendor (B&H) does not permit this font to be embedded in PDF. ]%%
...
[Warning] The font LucidaSans-Demi could not be embedded because of licensing restrictions.
Text may display incorrectly on platforms that do not have this font installed.
...
%%[ Flushing: rest of job (to end-of-file) will be ignored ]%%
%%[ Warning: PostScript error. No PDF file produced. ] %%

Now, I like to keep such documents in PDF rather than cutting and pasting into text files so I turned next to the freeware printing utility CutePDF and found it had no problem. It printed the web page as a PDF file just as I had asked Adobe to do… only CutePDF had no compunctions about embedded fonts being licensed to my machine. CutePDF uses the open source Ghostscript PostScript to PDF converter.

This is why open systems will win out every time against the forces of DRM. When DRM tries to stop us from legally accessing and ‘owing’ a copy of public documents it fails to meet the criteria of a reasonable and fair constraint on the use of intellectual property, in this case a font.

Carl Malamud understands the necessity for free and unrestricted access to public information – documents and databases. He understands the underlying technologies. This is why Cory Doctorow, Lawrence Lessig, Tim Bray and others who share these views are supporting his candidacy for the position of Public Printer of the United States via the Yes We Scan campaign.

For what its worth, I do too.

In fact, there are some governments on this side of the border who should also be paying attention to his candidacy and his platform for the fair dissemination of public documents and data.

Adobe… shame on you!

Cheers,
-pmh

There are countless ways to do this, and countless web sites to show you how, but what’s striking is the vast array of open source options. Not only Linux OS spin-offs like MythTV and Mythbuntu, but what appear to be very smooth products like Elisa and Neuros LINK from Fluendo and Neuros respectively.

These companies are not only using Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS), but many of them are actively inciting FLOSS developers to join their open source development communities to contribute to and hack their products. Neuros, for example, sends interested developers to its developer wiki directly from the same web page that directs customers to online support forums.

After years of denial from commercial software vendors, the FLOSS paradigm of development and support is proving increasingly useful for commercial consumer products.

These media related software & hardware products, and not the home Linux PC, appear to be the arena where the consumer is meeting open source systems for the first time… whether they know it or not.

Cheers,
-pmh

2. a new Nokia N800 Internet Tablet… pocket sized, blazingly fast at connecting to WiFi networks and bluetooth devices, a fine podcatcher and Internet Radio – with a linux terminal interface where I can enter most of the same shell commands I once used to manage big UNIX boxes.

3. a new unlocked Nokia 6300 GSM cell phone… a phone not only capable of going “native” in most countries of the world with local SIM cards, but also the miniature camera I’ve always needed to get those unexpected photos at unexpected times in unexpected places.

The whole, however, is greater than the sum of the parts. Together these devices enhance the capabilities of each other in ways I’m only beginning to appreciate.

I’ll be writing more about how these devices play together in the near future.

Cheers,
-pmh

This is certainly good for Sun. It is probably a good place for MySQL, given the alternatives. And it is most likely good for MySQL fans, whether they require the open version or the supported version of the MySQL license.

It also might help Sun figure out how it wishes to structure its own open source licenses in the future. In the past Sun has prevaricated over licensing for key products such as Java and Solaris. Perhaps the MySQL folks, who have successfully structured their own dual-licensing, will assist Sun management in working out future Sun licensing options.

Cheers,
-pmh

That was a playground (umm… for adults, you know – like Vegas).

Now we can go to work in a similar environment.

Sun has recently set up a virtual world for its teleworkers, very much like Second Life.

…and they appear to be giving it away as open source.

Now, I’m sure you will want to think very carefully about the design, and clothing, of your workplace avatar!

Cheers,
-pmh

It has been said that Oracle’s main interest in Linux, and Linux support, is to facilitate the hosting of Oracle’s proprietary products. (Oh, and if that cuts Microsoft out of the picture so that customers can spend more with Oracle so much the better!)

The Portable Consultant, whose present work happens to involve infrastructure design including database hosting options, agrees.

Oracle’s VM announcement seems to align with this approach: when hosting Oracle products, consider using Oracle-supported Linux and (New!) Oracle VM.

Whether Oracle’s free VM will challenge VMware in all its roles remains to be seen. My guess it that it is aimed primarily at hosting Oracle products and that is where Oracle development and support will focus.

Cheers,
-pmh